How to Learn Arabic as a Beginner

Asmaa Akl

06 Nov 2019

Arabic is deemed one of the most difficult languages to learn as a non-native. However, nothing is impossible with the right guidance. If you're feeling lost and constantly asking yourself where to start, then you've come to the right place. By the end of this article you'll have an answer to your questions.

If you want to know how to learn Arabic, you have to start from the basics, which is the Arabic alphabet.

Arabic letters (الأبجدية)

The very first thing that comes to mind when you ask yourself how can I learn Arabic as a beginner is how to learn the Arabic alphabet. Since it differs in form and direction from the Latin Alphabet, it is important to familiarize yourself with how the letters look as well as practice writing them. Each letter has more than one form depending on its position in a word, which brings us to the next point.

(The Arabic Letters (29 Letters))

The Changing Forms of the Letters

In order to learn Arabic as a beginner, learning the different forms of Arabic letters is a must in order to be able recognize them in Arabic texts. There are two forms for Arabic letters, joint and separated. Each letter changes forms depending on its position in the word. For example, the letter أ pronounced as /a/, is usually placed independently at the beginning of a word, however when it’s in the middle, it usually sticks to the previous letter except when it comes after some letters like و & ر & د (pronounced /w/, /r/ and /d/ respectively). At the end of word, sometimes it’s placed independently, other times, it extends from the previous letter for others. Another example is the letter ش pronounced as /ʃ/ or (sh), which has 3 forms; two that are joint and one that is separate as is shown in the image below.

(The Arabic Letter ش in different positions in Arabic words)

Nour Academy's approach to teaching Arabic letters classes:

We’ve established that in order to learn Arabic, you have to first learn the Arabic alphabet. We at Nour Academy depend on several approaches in order to teach Arabic letters online, the most important would be recitation and repetition, where our instructor reads a letter for a number of times, and waits for the student to repeat after him, then repeating the process as long as necessary. Digital activities are also included in order to test the students’ comprehension of the lesson. By the end of the course a student should be able to read the Arabic letters, recognize Arabic letters in their separated as well as joint forms, and join letters in order to make words. After learning how to read and write we then move on to teaching the Arabic language in a different course which is taught by native Arabs. If we answered your question about How to learn Arabic for beginners, take a look at our different classes here.

• Arabic Course
• The Arabic Letters

Both of these classes approach the topic of learning the Arabic letters from scratch but Al Qaeda Al Nourania is more targeted towards reading the holy Quran and the first course is targeted towards learning Arabic. They are interchangeable though.