Shadee Elmasry – Lesson 1 The Long Vowels
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Bismillah R Rahman r Rahim. One of the things that came up when we
did our first set of videos on Arabic when which we had the text
on the screen is that well, what about people who you know are
still learning. And we figured let's make this a one stop shop.
Let's make Safina online a one stop shop. So the alphabet now is
something that we want to put up and we'll put up part of it.
Publicly, the rest of it will be free, but it will be on Safina
online on the teachable site so people can ask questions. So let's
just take a quick overview. So the Arabic alphabet is actually pretty
easy. Believe it or not, the pronunciation is the harder part.
So your longer vowels are three and if
and if and well, and, yeah, okay, these are your long vowels and
these to the well in the in the also act as constants. Now, the
easy thing about Arabic is that there are a set of eight letters
that are all the same, except for the dots. So that and that makes
it easy for reading or memorizing the letters, but actually makes
reading a bit of a challenge because you have to your eyes have
to make do take two steps, you have to see the what they call the
global element of the letter, which is the plate that you see
here, and then the local element of the letter, which is the dots,
okay, so better than Jeem have got
then Dell and that
the Nura and Zane
seen sheen
solid body, these are the two hardest letters, the body in
particular thought
and a lot.
And then you have your eye again. And again. So you notice it's
basically a series of dots. That's the that's the whole thing is the
issue of the dots. And then you have seven letters that are
separated and that is fat
off calf.
And then calf looks like that at the beginning.
And then
them meme known
her.
Whoa, you have lamb Elif is actually a letter. And then yet
you notice that well when you get repeat here. Because they are both
they double up as vowels and consonants. Okay, they double up
as vowels and consonants. So that's your overview of the
alphabet in general. And I mean, it's easy to sit there and
memorize it. And the thing is, you can't be afraid of Arabic and
nervous and I don't know what to do. And it's actually not that
hard. You just got to swim in whether it's Arabic books or
videos, and constantly write them down and just swim in it. And just
language is learned by acquisition. It's not always so
systematic. And that's one of the things that people get turned off,
or they get intimidated by or they hesitate because they wonder how
can I systematically do this, you don't systematically learn a
language, even though system systems are good, but the
systematic element doesn't work all the time.
So now let's empty the screen. And let's look at the LFO. And the now
the lf you oftentimes see it presented as so. But in reality,
the Hamza is a consonant by itself. And the vowel element is
just the stripe. The Elif is the vowel element. Okay, so you know
what, let's, let's increase the font a little bit here. Let's go
up to 50.
Divided for deck.
So oftentimes, you see the elephant in life. So with the
Hamza, the Hamza is actually a consonant. It's a almost you could
say a letter by itself, right? Even though we don't consider it a
letter. It's not counted as a letter, but in fact, it is the
sound that comes up, which is right up here. Okay. Is the and
here it is by itself. Okay? Is the sound, right? And the LF by itself
is just the stripe. Okay? Just the stripe. Now, for in terms of
meaning, this LF right here that I just highlighted, it renders the
verb that comes after it to be a question. So let's say I said the
verb shut if you drink. That's a verb, right? I want to ask now,
did you drink? So I would make it ash at hippo? Right. So you place
that Elif, and Hamza in front of a word. That's one of the meanings
that that some prefix does. And one of the usages of the edit with
the Hamza is to render something into a question. So Carla mukha
means your pen. If I say a color Mocha, it means is it your pen?
Okay, so that's one of the meanings of the LF with the Hamza.
Now we go to the way it's written. And the let's say we have text.
Let's just throw a bunch of text here. And then we want to add an
ad if you can add an edit, but afterwards
Nothing connects to it. If you notice here, okay, nothing
connects after the Elif. So the NF receives a connection, but it does
not give a connection. It's one of six letters that don't know one of
the few letters that don't give a connection. Okay, then the raw
Zayn Elif well, that six letters that do not connect after it. So
before it connects, but not after. All right, good. So now let's look
at that's the that's your Elif. Now, let's look at the Whoa. Okay.
Now the wo
is actually considered one of the most beautiful letters in the
Arabic language writing the all the Ottoman work and a lot of
these
calligraphers, they just love to make the world, right, they'll
just make wells by themselves or floating in the middle of the
text, you'll see oh, well, okay. It's also the symbol, the symbol
of the the Dhamma is like that. So it's close, because it's obviously
a short vowel version of the well. So that was an easy connection
right there. So now the wo is again a consonant but it's also as
we're studying here, a vowel as the OU sound. Okay? Ooh, sound.
And the wo, by itself has a couple of meanings. The first meaning is
that it is an oath. Okay. Wallahi. Alright, say Wallahi. All right,
it is an oath. Okay. The other meaning of
well is a conjunction. So if you're saying you have, you know,
so and so here, what, and then so and so here, I'm just putting any
letters right at this point. So it's a conjunction, it means and,
right. It's a conjunction meaning and so that's the second meaning
of what has actually eliminated the third one, we're only going to
cover three, so don't worry. The third one is that the well is
something called is stick Neff, which means to begin into idea,
and this is something you'll note in Arabic texts, is that the ABS
until recently never used periods. They just stopped when the
sentence was over. And they marked, they didn't mark the end
of one sentence. Rather, they marked the beginning of the next
sentence with Whoa. Okay, so they marked it with just the letter
well, and many translators end up translating well as en. So you
see, all these sentences begin with it. And they drilled it in
our heads in English language you don't start a sentence with and so
actually, that translation is incorrect. The correct translation
is that it's just a new sentence, you don't need to say anything.
You don't translate it at all, just a marker of a new sentence,
of course, the you pronounce it. And in the Quran, it's there many
times you do pronounce it, but it as a translation in meaning in
English, you don't use it, you don't put anything at all. Now
let's look at how the well connects the well again connects
from the back, let's say you put some letters down and the weld
connects from the back like so.
You want to add Well, you just loop into it. However, if you
continue writing text, there is no connection afterwards. Okay, so
the weld does not connect afterwards, just like the end if
it connects only from the back end. Well, when LFR to the
easiest, let us learn because they have one form. Got one form, they
don't have teeth. They don't change forms from beginning,
middle or end. Again, I'm just putting any letters here for now
until you start knowing words that will add words to it. Now let's
look at the last vowel and that is the right so look to edit, looked
at well, and now we're going to look at the Yep, and the again is
a consonant.
Why sound? Uh, yeah. And it's also the e sound good. So it's a
consonant of the it's the long vowel of it. Sorry, the, the long
vowel of it is the e sound. And it doesn't have any meaning by itself
the IE at the sorry, I should say at the end it does have meaning as
a word but at the end, it does indicate possession. So if I have
the word like God is the word Putnam got them and then I want to
say it's my pen yada yet by me, okay, got me. Now also, if you are
the as a suffix, did I say prefix before I met suffix also has
another meaning which is attribution. So if I say if I want
to be attributed as Hanafi for example, you say Hanna fee. Okay.
Hanafy. So the has as a suffix has two meanings being possession and
attribution. So I'm attributing myself to this method or let's say
you are American, so you say an emery key. Okay, somebody key and
good.
Or you would say, but it's funny.
Right? But it Barney. Alright, so that is attribution. So now you
know a couple of meanings. Now you're not the F with the Hamza
refers to beginning of a question. All right, we looked at three
meanings of the well and then two meanings of the yet. Okay. So
that's three meanings or total of six meanings that you've looked
at. Alright, so now let's look at and usually you might want to jot
this down. I mean, you got the video so you can just watch it
again.
and later if you forget, but these are six basic meanings. And like I
said, there is no specific system, the general system is you're going
to begin with the alphabet to learn Arabic, then you're going to
start learning words, then grammar, right, and so on and so
forth, then you read, but there is no specific system systematic way.
That's the only way you just take whatever you can get. And the more
you review, and the more you just watch videos, because we need a
thick middle class that can read classical Arabic, to end to bring
an end to the reign of nonsense that has taken over the western
hemisphere of bloggers and so called public intellectuals that
are just leading people astray if they had just limited themselves
to talking about anything else beyond theology and Islamic law,
because they are making a mess out of everything with these ideas.
And I hate to be negative, but sometimes negativity. I mean,
think about the Shahada. What is the show had to do? It begins with
false Scots says, There are no false gods, right? So it begins
with the reality that we're in, which is that there are bad things
going on. Now. This is how to rectify it. So actually, if you
think about Islamic theology and Dawa,
it begins and the prophets message, it begins with the
reality. And the reality is that there's a mess, and the reform in
modern idea, modernist ideas, reformed ideas are
totally misrepresenting a sacred tradition that is 1000s of years
old. Sorry, hundreds of years old, right over 1000 years old, I meant
to say, and we certainly have to just get back to the text and
start reading. So if you think oh, my gosh, I can't read Arabic.
Well, listen, you're gonna learn that's how simple it is. Well, you
don't know how to read Arabic, you learn. You start from today, a
year from today, you will say, Well, I'm glad I started a year
ago, I can actually read a sentence. Let's look at the, in
the beginning of the word, it looks like so okay, it's a tooth
with two dots underneath it. And then you could write
any word that you want, right? You could put an end if here, that
sound edit would look, that's how a well would look.
Now let's look at let's say you put, Let's hypothetically, say you
put a 10 letter tag, okay. And then you put a Yeah, again,
there. Yeah, in the middle of the word is this one right here.
Again, it is a tooth and two dots. And then let's say you put a meme
and then you wanted to wrap it off, wrap it up with another yet.
That's how the looks at the end. Okay. At the end, this is not a
word. I mean, it's a word. It means my orphan. I didn't intend
to write that it just I'm just throwing letters out at this
point. Okay, so that's yet yeah, meme. And yet. All right. So that
is the letter yet summarize. These are the long vowels. And we looked
at the meanings, okay, that they represent by themselves. And then
we looked at how they match up in the beginning of the word, middle
of the word and the end of the word. So that's your first lesson
in Arabic. All right. So you take your first lesson, you watch the
video a couple times, and you start putting, you know, get a
pencil. Don't use pen. Because pen is a bit slippery in when it comes
to Arabic, use a pencil and start trying to write this stuff down
and look for it in the Quran. And slowly, slowly, you will get to
the level of reading and slowly, slowly you will get to that level
of vocabulary. And as we start adding consonants, we'll make up
our own vocabulary vault so that you can start studying a Quranic
vocabulary. Just like Kamala