Monday, July 8, 2013

Four Arabic Letters

Thrice this last weekend I saw Arabic script and was not able to read it, so I am now seeking to remedy this problem. I found a website with a very nifty alphabet tutorial, but some of the letters remain very difficult to recognize.

Here is the website: http://www.shariahprogram.ca/Arabic-alphabet.shtml
(Yes, it promotes Islam and Shariah Law, but it was a lot easier and more helpful than any other website, so I'll recommend it to anyone who wants to pronounce Arabic.)

ص
ض
ط
ظ

So those are the letter I am struggling with: Saad, Daad, Taa, Zaa. The difficulty is that they are "deeper" forms of other letters: Seen, Daal, Taa (yep, same name), and Zeiy. SoDa TaZor, is going to be how I remember these letters, at least for a while. I do think this is working, I opened up an Arabic Bible to the Matthew the other day and was recognized the word "abnu" which is probably "son", but I had trouble finding the name of the Lord. It has an "ein" on the end, which is easy to pick out in speech but uncomfortable to make. It is pronounced "Yasu'a", with the apostrophe standing for the ein. Google Translate has a nifty button the will speak Arabic that is typed in. I hope to have this alphabet down before too long.

يَسُوعَ (Yasu'a)

2 comments:

  1. sir, here is a link that might be useful.

    http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3ADF279D8F4C2DC1

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! I appreciate all the help I can get.

    ReplyDelete