Arabic Character Writing For Dummies

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 1

Icons Used in This Book 2

Where to Go from Here 2

Chapter 1: Wrapping Your Mind around the Characters of the Arabic Alphabet 3

A Brief History of the Arabic Language and Its Alphabet 3

What? No Vowels? 4

Connecting the Different Forms of the Letters 4

Why Learn to Write Arabic? 5

Strategies for Learning to Write Arabic Letters 6

Set goals 6

Chapter 2: The Write Stuff 7

Traditional Writing Utensils and Mediums 7

Your Best Options — Pencil and Paper 8

A Fountain of Fonts 8

There’s More than One Way to Write 9

Long Live Cursive Writing! 9

Write, review, rinse, repeat 10

Chapter 3: Characters and Symbols to Practice 11

The Short Vowels 70

Additional Symbols 71

The Long Vowels 72

Phrases in Arabic 73

The Numbers 75

Appendix: Extra Practice Pages 77