Arabic Articles To Read

[Marilu Mandez]

ReadArabic! اقرأ العربية site. Funded by the US Department of Education, the materials of Read Arabic! were developed to provide online e-learning reading lessons aimed at beginning and intermediate students of the language. Good stuff here.

Wikipedia Arabic pages. Everyone knows Wikipedia. What you may not realize is that by starting on the Arabic homepage of Wikipedia, you may enter a search for any topic in English, and the results will show Arabic language articles for that topic. Extremely useful for finding reading material relevant to specific topics.

Put simply, increasing your ability in reading causes an increase in understanding of both the form and the meaning of Arabic, and enables you to understand and communicate deep meaning more effectively.

Put simply, the more you read Arabic, the more your vocabulary grows. And the more your vocabulary grows, the more you are able to understand and produce Arabic language that communicates clearly.

The more you advance in your Arabic proficiency, the more important it is to read Arabic. At the intermediate level, there is a need to develop comprehension in reading on a wide range of topics. At the advanced level, increasing the speed of reading through extensive practice is a primary goal[3]. At the university level, reading is used as a main indicator of progress for students learning Arabic[4].

Like most things, when it comes to reading Arabic, most of us are best served by developing a habit. A habit, once formed, takes the decision-making variable out of whether or not we ready daily. Often times it is not a lack of time or energy that prevents us from doing what we know will help us learn effectively, but a lack of willpower. Habits bypass willpower, once they are formed. Which is why I like to form habits!

For many learners of Arabic whose first language uses the Latin script for writing (including English and other European languages), the Arabic alphabet and writing system can be a hurdle that looks difficult and often discourages reading. For learners whose first language does not use Latin script, such as Cyrillic or Chinese, it still comes across as a hurdle, although many speakers of these languages have often already had to cross the barrier of working with a different writing system in their academic pursuits, and so the psychological hurdle of the Arabic alphabet may not seem as big.

Whatever the case, the Arabic alphabet can be initially discouraging for people who want to read Arabic. But the benefits of learning to read Arabic far outweigh the inconvenience of a new writing system. In my experience, as well as in the experience of many others with whom I have spoken, the difficulty of using a new script begins to decrease after a week or so of regular use. I have put together a simple page of short videos on how the basic (isolated) form of each Arabic letter is formed. This may be helpful for some people. There is an order to how each stroke is made, and the direction of the stroke. At some point, I may try to add the other forms of each letter (initial, medial, and final).

Another challenge for those learning to read Arabic is that written Arabic does not match the dialects of Arabic spoken across the Arab world. The Arabic of writing is known as Modern Standard Arabic (or often referred to as فُصْحَى / fuSHa, which is not technically the same thing but for our purposes here will work), while the spoken dialects are often referred to as عَامِّيَّة / 3aammiyya.

This is a situation that is known as diglossia in linguistics, when two dialects or languages are used by a single language community, and it is often seen as presenting Arabic learners with a difficult decision when they begin to learn. Should they begin with Modern Standard Arabic that is not spoken by people on an everyday basis, or start with a dialect at the expense of being able to fluently read?

However, bear in mind that the situation is not a simple black and white scenario where Modern Standard Arabic is on one side, and dialects on the other. The reality is that in real life, they are blended together in varying levels, depending on the context and situation. I have written a previous article on this, and the following diagram illustrates some of the aspects of this.

To read in Arabic is to practice one of the essential skills of an Arabic learner. If you have found resources or ideas that are particularly helpful for increasing reading skill in Arabic, please comment below and share your ideas with other readers.

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Unlike most other Arabic particles, al- is always prefixed to another word and never stands alone. Consequently, many dictionaries do not list it, and it is almost invariably ignored in collation, as it is not an intrinsic part of the word.

To put al- into perspective, there are many ways in which Arabic words can be made definite. These include the use of personal pronouns like "me", the use of proper nouns like "Saudi Arabia", demonstrative pronouns like "this man", relative pronouns like "the man who ...", vocation like "O man", possession like "my man", and of course the definite article like "the man".[1] Apart from possession, prefixing a noun with al- is the weakest form of definiteness.[1] That is, saying "the man" does not define the man being referred to as clearly as saying "this man", for example.

The etymology of al- is the study of how it developed and how it changed over time. There are several major opinions in regards to the origins of the Arabic definite article. The earliest evidence of the article, besides a 1st-century BC inscription in Qaryat al-Faw (formerly Qaryat Dhat Kahil, near Sulayyil, Saudi Arabia),[2][3][4] occurs in the 5th century BC, in the epithet of a goddess which Herodotus (Histories I: 131, III: 8) quotes in its preclassical Arabic form as Alilat (Ἀλιλάτ, i. e.,ʼal-ʼilat), which means "the goddess".[5]

While the Proto-Semitic language did not have any articles,[6][7] the most likely theory is that the article al- comes from the same proto-Semitic source as the Hebrew definite article ה ha-.[8] That theory is based primarily on the fact that the two share many similarities. Both particles are prefixed to nouns, and both geminate with certain following letters.[8] Moreover, neither particle is prefixed to non-final nouns in a genitival construction.[8] Finally, both are prefixed to relative clauses.[8] According to David Testen, many northern and southwestern Semitic languages have particles that bear similarities to al-.[8] With this fact, he posits that al- has a proto-Semitic antecedent.

According to Jacob Barth, who was lecturer in Hebrew at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, al- comes directly from the Arabic negating particle, لا lā.[11] He conjectures that lā became al- through a process of metathesis. That is to say, the lām and the alif swapped positions. It is noteworthy that the negation denoted by lā and the definiteness denoted by al- are in stark contrast to each other.

A classical (and largely one-sided) debate in regards to al- is whether the hamza is volatile or not. The majority opinion is that of Sibawayh (d. ca. 797), who considers the hamza volatile.[13][14][15] In his opinion, the hamza neither is part of al- nor contributes to the definiteness of the following word.

Khalīl, Ibn Keisān and Akhfash, on the other hand, consider the hamza not to be volatile.[13][15] There is a further debate among the proponents of the second theory. Some do not consider the hamza volatile and assert that it contributes to the definiteness of the following word. Others assert that the hamza contributes to the definiteness of the following word but is still volatile.[13]

In his defence, Khalīl argues that when a word prefixed with al- is preceded by the interrogative hamza, the two hamzas mix.[16] For example, when the word الآن al-āna (now) is prefixed with it, the result is آلآن āl-āna. Clearly, the hamza of al- does not drop in this case even though there is no further purpose for it.

Despite the myriad of proofs for the argument, in most classical grammars and in modern Arabic, the opinion of Sibawayh is often taken as an axiomatic fact.[19] There are many proofs and counterproofs, but the overarching argument in favour of this opinion is as follows:

The lām in al- is the only lām particle in the language with a sukūn (to avoid confusion, as mentioned). Thus, it requires a volatile hamza.[19] Moreover, al- is a particle, and Arabic particles do not drop letters (without losing their meanings or connotations). Yet the hamza in al- drops all the time. Therefore, it must be volatile, or al- would lose its ability to render the following word definite.[18]

In very early Semitic languages, definiteness was achieved through gemination of the first letter in a word.[20] For example, the word kitāb would be made definite by ak-kitāb. An additional benefit of this construction was to connote "determination".[21] The lām in the Arabic al- was thus a result of a dissimilation process.[22]

In Arabic, this gemination occurs when the word to which al- is prefixed begins with one of the fourteen sun letters.[23] Twelve of these letters (including lām) are originally designed to geminate. Ḍād and shīn have been included due to their similarities in pronunciation with lām and ţā, respectively.[24] For example, the word الرجل al-rajul 'the man' is actually pronounced "ar-rajul". Notice that the lām is written but not pronounced.

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