There are a variety of marks you will find on the letters. While all of them may help your pronunciation, nearly all of them will also change the meaning of a word and give you vital clues to the grammar - who is doing what to whom!!! They are there to help you.

These all indicate which short vowel sound should be made on saying the associated letter.

ْ  , often written to look like a comma over the letter, indicates no vowel should be sounded on the letter. Compare the ف in and .

َ  sounds like 'a'. You just heard it twice in  . At the end of a noun this is often used to indicate the 'accusative' case on the receiving end of the verb in the sentence.

ُ  sounds like a 'u'. You have just heard it in  ! At the end of a noun, this will nearly always indicate the 'nominative' case - that the word is the one doing the action of the verb in the sentence.

ِ  , written below the letter, sounds like 'i'. Yes, it was in  . Used at the end for the 'genitive' case that links nouns together, or links them to prepositions like 'after, on, from, to, etc.'

Don't worry too much about the grammar at the moment, you'll get plenty of practice later when there is some context to see it at work! But notice that مُفْلِح could become or or depending on its function in the sentence.

These will only occur on the end of a noun, and indicate an 'indefinite' noun. They sound like the plain vowel with an added 'n'.

Letters with this should always be pronounced double. Sometimes it is put in just to help pronunciation, sometimes as a shorthand for a letter being present twice. If a letter is present twice, you will have to take this into account when deciphering meanings and forms. It is always combined with َ   ُ or ِ  which should be pronounced on the second sounding of the letter - as on the ل in . Note that the ِ  is sometimes written just below the ّ  whereas the َ and ُ are written just above it.

On the first letter of a word, it is only ever a pronunciation guide. No word starts with a d-double l-letter. Just say the last letter of the previous word like the first letter of the second word. As an example, the 3rd, 4th and 5th words of 2:5 are هُدًى مِن رَبِّهِم, but in flowing speech this becomes هُدًى مِّن رَّبِّهِم.

With words that have ال prefixed, sometimes the ل is pronounced, and sometimes it is dropped in favour of doubling the sound of the first letter. Compare with  . In fact Arabic grammarians call the two types of letters 'sun' and 'moon' letters. But you don't need to learn which letters are which since the pronunciation is written out in front of you each time you read the quraan.

A shorthand way of writing ا, already mentioned in the previous lesson.

You may see this on the ا of ال in the Saudi print.

Another pronunciation guide - draw the vowel out nice and long!

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