Vowel markings in Arabic

This is undoubtedly one of the most unsettling things about learning Arabic: the absence of vowels. As I mentioned in the first lesson, most vowels are not written in standard Arabic texts.

In fact, we don’t really have any vowels in the Arabic alphabet, at least not in the sense that we, users of the Latin alphabet understand it.

The three vowels of the Arabic alphabet

The grammatical definition of a vowel

The ‘grammatical’ definition of a vowel is really phonetics: it’s the way the sound is pronounced that counts. To pronounce vowels, the air passes unimpeded from the back of the throat to the outside of the lips. For consonants, there is a momentary obstacle that will form the sound of the consonant..

In all European languages, we have several vowels, traditionally ‘a, e, i, o, u’, accents (é or è in French, ü or ö in German) which modify the vowel sound or not at all (ù), and ‘compound vowels’, diphthongs, ai, io, or …. plus, somewhere, a letter, the y, which will help us to understand vowels in Arabic. The y is not one of our traditional vowels, yet it is an ‘ii’ sound, and therefore a vowel.

The diacritical marks

In grammatical language, a diacritical mark is a mark that modifies the pronunciation of a letter. In French or German, we have the accents – grave, acute and circumflex, the umlaut and the cedilla. There are others, such as the tilde ~ in Spanish. In Arabic, diacritics are used to mark most vowels..

In Arabic, there are only three vowels: Alif ا , which is more of an ‘A’ sound, Ya ي , which is more of an ‘i’ sound, and Waw و , which is more of an ‘Ou’ sound. But these are long vowels. Short vowels aren’t worth writing (basically). So we mark them with little signs that change the pronunciation of the consonant (these are diacritical marks, if you want to know what they are you can click on the arrow to see the definition. But it’s not necessary for the rest of the lesson).

And the Ha? Well, it’s not a vowel, because it also marks a little glottal sound, a very slight stop.

La position des trois signes par rapport à la ligne d'appui — Fatha, Kasra and Damma, the three short ‘vowels’ in relation to the support line

These are the three signs:

a small slash above the letter, for the ‘A’ sound (called the fatha – فَتْحَةٌ )
a small slash below the letter, for the ‘I’ sound (called the kasra – كَسْرَة )
and for the ‘Ou’ sound, a small miniature Waw above the letter (called the damma – ضَمَّة )

How can I remember them easily?

the fatha is an elongated Alif
the kasra is the two points of the Ya that have been joined together
and the damma, too easy because it looks so much like the Waw.

These vowels are still used in religious texts, where it is essential not to change ‘one letter’ of the divine word.

Apart from that, they are very rarely used in everyday life. Even on my marriage contract, which is a very official document on which there should be no mistakes, there are no such little signs. You can also use them ‘from time to time’, when it’s essential to clear up an ambiguity, but most of the time, people do without them.

Here’s what vocalised words look like:

Vocalized words — Three Arabic words in vocalized form

The first is زُجاج , the glass. The damma is clearly visible, and as the is not ‘vocalised’, it is pronounced A. This gives

The second is جَمَل which is pronounced which means ‘the camel’. But with a final damma , الجملُ , it becomes ‘sentences, punishments’ . And if, instead of using a short vowel with the fatha, we use a long A, i.e. an Alif, then we have جمال which means ‘beauty’ and is the origin of the two first names Djamel and Djamila and

The third is a first name, Ziyad . It has two vowels and a kasra, and is pronounced as follows . It therefore begins with an i because of the short kasra, then an unvoiced ي , ya, followed by an unvoiced ا , a:

The Tanwin – تَنْوينٌ

You don’t really think you’re going to get away with this, with three little signs you can learn in a minute, do you? We said ‘ten minutes a day’.

Tanwin is the doubling of vocalisation. We’ll write two kasra, for example, one under the other, like this: ٍ .

But there’s a catch! It doesn’t mean that we’re pronouncing two i’s in a row, no, but that we’re going to add an n. ‘in’. So a نٍ with two kasra one under the other is pronounced nin.

The tanwin marks the indefinite article

In Arabic, we have a unique article, which is the definite article. To make the equivalent of the French indefinite article, we add at the end of the word the nominative mark with e the tanwin. ولاد : boy , ألوالدُ the boy , ولادٌ a boy.

To write the vowels or not?

In fact, I’d recommend that you try to learn to read and write without vocalisation straight away. In most Arabic courses, you start by learning with the vowels, only to give up after a month or two. But maybe it’s better to learn right away ‘without the vowels’ (at least, I prefer it, because I don’t get tangled up). Much later, when you have a good command of Arabic, if you’re interested in Quranic Arabic, then you can learn all the subtleties of vocalisation (and there are many).

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