In Arabic, words are written in a cursive style (this means that letters are joined together in a word), there is no discreet type of handwriting in Arabic. Because of this, letters are written in four different forms depending on their location in words. The following table shows all forms of the Arabic script for each letter (Remember that Arabic is written from your right to left).

Audio Final Form Medial Form Initial Form Detached Form Letter Alef Ba' Ta' Tha' Jeem Ha' Kha' Dal Thal Ra' Zay Seen Sheen Sad Dhad Ta Dza Ain Ghain Fa' Qaf Kaf Lam Meem Noon Ha Waw Ya'

Notes:

• You should have noticed that the following six letters : Alef (A), Dal (D), Thal (Th), Ra' (R), Zay (Z), Waw (W) "those letters' names are marked in red in the previous table" have the same medial and final form (this means that these letters cannot be joined with the letter that comes after them, when they come in the middle or beginning of a word).
• When a letter of the group of six letters mentioned above comes next to another letter from the same group, the second one is written in its detached form. (Confused?? Well.. there is an example on this case in the next lesson!!).
• When the letter "Alef" comes after the letter "Lam" it is written in a different form from the one above (this is true for both medial and final forms). The form is: (which is read " LA " by the way )
  

Note: You can take advantage of the Arabic dictionary as a learning aid available in every lesson of the Arabic Tutorial:

	Language:	Arabic	Direction: Into English From English
	Word:

	Download Print Email me Top - Change the language of the tutorial - - - - - -
	Recommend the Arabic tutorial to a Friend:   Bookmark Homepage

If you liked this tutorial and thought that it helped you, then feel free to add a link to this tutorial from your website and tell other people about it.

Created by Fadi S. ©1999 | |


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Fadi's Arabic Tutorial. 1999 (Fadi S.)

---