ARABIC ALPHABET IS NOT TOO HARD AS IT APPEARS TO YOU

Just to put it out there, I only learned the Arabic alphabet out of curiosity. I cannot speak or write this language at all. So just to be clear about that before I dwell into the Arabic alphabet.

PROPOSITION: ARABIC ALPHABET ARE TRULY DIFFICULT BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO LEARN ALL 4 FORMS: ISOLATED, INITIAL, MEDIAL AND FINAL.

Arabic alphabet shares many similarities with some other writing systems such as traditional Mongolian script because the shape of the characters change depends on the its position in a word. In order to contrast the difference between an Latin alphabet and an alphabet like Arabic, I would demonstrate below an example:

Isolated: A

Intial: Ab

Medial bAc

Final bcA

As you can I see, the position of the letter "A" in the simple strings of texts above does not induce a change in its shape. This is not true for Arabic.

Below is the table of the Arabic alphabet that I randomly pulled from the internet:

There are indeed four columns for each and every character of this alphabet.

A beginner in Arabic will throw his hands in the air and claim that it is such a big hurdle to learn this alphabet because you literally have to go through all 4 forms of each character.

Surprising, I say that you only have to master 2 forms, with exception to the letter "Haa", which is the third counting from bottom to top in the above picture.

COUNTER-ARGUMENT: YOU ONLY HAVE TO MASTER 2 FORMS OF AN ARABIC CHARACTER, EXCEPT FOR CERTAIN CHARACTERS.

Before I present in full my counter-argument, I would like to say that Arabic is read from right to left, instead of from left to right, as we do with Latin alphabets. So, you will find yourself writing Arabic by linking characters inversely compared to when you write in English, for example.

Now onto the main argument. If you observe carefully the "Isolated" and the "Final" column in the table above, you would see that they look almost similar to each other. The main difference is that, upon close scrutiny, the "Final" column includes a linking part to the right of the character. What does it mean, it means that you could simply learn only the "Isolated" column, then adding the linking "dash" to the right of the characters and you will be good to go. The only exception is the "Alif", "Aeen", "Gheen", and especially the "Meem". You see, just by adding a linking "tail" to the right and you have learned the "Isolated" and "Final" forms of the alphabet.

We are now left with two columns, "Initial" and "Medial". Yes, that's right. They look similar to each other just like the "Isolated" and the "Final". To write the "Medial", you only have to add a linking "tail" to the right, in the same fashion as prescribed above, and you would get everything done within a short time span. Again, the strong exception is the "Meem".

For this alphabet, the "Meem" is the only character where you have to learn all 4 positions. The rest is just a walk in the park.

There you have it! Major tip that save you from the initial intimidating impression that you have about this beautiful alphabet.

Enjoy and I wish you success on your path to master Arabic!