Prof_mu3allim

There are 28 letters in the Arabic alphabet. It’s written from right to left in a cursive style. There are no capital letters in Arabic.

أ ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن هـ و ي

Arabic letters have slightly different shapes depending on where they are in a word i.e. whether they stand alone or are connected to a following or preceding letter or both. We write in cursive so we need to connect the letters.

Let’s take the letter "meem" م (Arabic m) for example. In its independent (isolated) form it is made of a small circle, a small stroke to the left then a long downward stroke. Now, when we wanna connect it to a letter after it, it would be inconvenient to do the long downward stroke then go all the way up to where the next letter starts :think-about-it: . That’s why we just drop the long downward stroke, leaving just the small circle and the short stroke to the left مـ

م + ب = مب

So م 's small circle is what we call a core, that part of the letter that distinguishes it.

:meow-coffee:

This is the letter baa' ب (Arabic b). The core (main parts) of the letter are the initial tooth and the dot beneath the letter. The second tooth is considered the "tail" and we remove it when the ب is followed by another letter.

In the initial position (first letter in a word i.e. only connects to a following letter) it turns into بــ :

ب + م = بم

ب + ج = بج

In the medial position (the letter is connected to two other letters) the ب looks like this ـبــ and in the final position (connected only to the preceding letter) it looks like this ـب :

م + ب + م = مبم

م + ب = مب

:meow-coffee:

Look at these letters س ش ص ض :wtf-am-i-reading: they all have that curved part at the end so it doesn't help us tell them apart i.e. it is not part of the core, it's the tail. The core is سـ شـ صـ ضـ

You can still tell them apart, can't you?

س + ب + ص = سبص

م + س + ب + ض = مسبض

The ص is the final letter which means it gets to keep its tail. We only remove the tail so we can easily connect a letter to the one after it.

:ortega-clap: