Lesson 1 — This is…
Point at something and name it, and ask what or who it is. By the end of this lesson you can hold a real exchange: ask, answer, and greet.
How it works
Arabic has no word for "is" in the present tense
هَذَا بَيْتٌ is literally two words — "this house" — and it means "This is a house." There is nothing missing; the sentence is complete. This is the single biggest adjustment for an English speaker, and once it stops feeling like an error you have crossed the first bridge.
The little ـٌ at the end means "a"
That doubled ḍammah is tanwīn, pronounced -un. بَيْتٌ = baytun = "a house." It marks the word as indefinite. When you later learn الْ ("the"), the tanwīn drops: الْبَيْتُ = al-baytu = "the house."
هَذَا for masculine, هَذِهِ for feminine
Arabic nouns are one or the other. Most feminine nouns end in ة (tā' marbūṭah) — سَيَّارَةٌ, غُرْفَةٌ — which is a reliable first rule, though not the only sign. Say هَذَا for a masculine thing and هَذِهِ for a feminine one.
In speech, you may drop the final vowel
When you stop at the end of a sentence, baytun is normally pronounced bayt. The full ending is what you write and what you read in the Qur'an; the shortened form is how people speak. Both are given below — the transliteration shows the full form.
Words
Sentences
Saying it to someone
Grammar you cannot use in a conversation is not yet Arabic. These are the lines that turn the words above into an exchange.
Practise
- Walk through one room and name five things aloud with هَذَا or هَذِهِ.
- Ask مَا هَذَا؟ about an object, then answer your own question.
- Greet someone with as-salāmu ʿalaykum and ask كَيْفَ حَالُكَ؟ — then answer bi-khayrin, al-ḥamdu lillāh.
Transliteration uses ḥ ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ for the emphatic letters, ʿ for ʿayn, ʾ for hamzah, and ā ī ū for long vowels. Read the Arabic, not the transliteration — the transliteration is a crutch to be dropped as early as you can.