Below is the Arabic alphabet in a table containing 4 columns (The sound of the Arabic letters, script, English equivalent, an example of the sound in English). Please note that whenever there is a *, that means there is no equivalent in English and that the best way to know how the letter sounds is to click on the sound button. Make sure you repeat each letter after you hear it.

The following is a table showing each letter of the alphabet based on its occurrence in a word. For example whether the letter occurs at the beginning of the word “initial”, middle of the word, or at the end of the word “final”. Look at the example below:

The letter “S” or “س” in Arabic is highlighted Red. Notice how it the “s” in Salam is different then the “s” in Fes? Do not let that scare you. The variation is simply for esthetic reasons. Also note that the change is not very dramatic. Check out the rest of the alphabet and see for yourself. Sometimes you will notice that there is no change at all.

Arabic Vowels

Imagine you decided one day to write in English by making each word as short as possible but you still want that word to be understood by others. So you decided to write the word “huwa” as “hw”. But you got worried that others may not understand it. So you decided to add the missing “u” and “a” in tiny characters (image below). After a couple months, you got used to the fact that “hw” is pronounced “huwa” that you no longer need you to add the tiny letters anymore. So whenever you wrote letters “hw”, you knew immediately it is pronounced as “huwa”. That’s how Arabic deals with vowels.

“Huwa” means “He” and “Hiya” means “She”. If you look at the image above, you will see how Arabic used vowels (in red). They are usually omitted because most people already understand the meaning of words without the need for vowels. The only time vowels are used is to clear confusion or for teaching purposes.