Hello! For those of you who have been following us for quite some time, welcome back to the Kaleela blog. And for those of you who are joining us for the first time, we’d like to invite you to join us today as we continue our series on the Arabic alphabet where we’ll be looking at the letter ن /noon/ today.
The Arabic letter ن /noon/ is a consonant letter and sounds exactly like the English “n”. Along with most of the other Arabic letters you’ve learned about, the shape of ن /noon/ changes depending on where it falls in a word – that is, it changes shape if it comes at the beginning of the word (initial), the middle of the word (medial), or the end of the word (final).
We’ll start with the shapes of ن /noon/ by looking at its stand-alone shape (ن). Notice how it looks like a “u” with a dot above it.
Now Let’s look at the shapes of ن /noon/ depending on its position in the word:
When ن /noon/ comes in the middle of a word (or anywhere except the first or last letters) two things can happen:
First, ن /noon/ is connected on both sides as in بِنت /bint/ “girl”
and looks like a halved “u” with a dot over the right side.
The other thing that can happen when ن /noon/ is in the medial position is that it can be disconnected from the right side as in زَنجَبيل /zanjabeel/ ”ginger”
Once again, in this position, it takes on the shape of a halved “u” with a dot over the right side.
When ن /noon/ comes at the end of a word, again, two things can happen:
First, it can fall at the end while being connected to the previous letters in the word as in تين /teen/ “fig”.
Notice that, here at the end, it takes on the shape of a “u” with a dot on top of it.
If it falls at the end and is disconnected from the previous letters in the word as in زَيتون /zaytoon/ “olives”
then it takes the shape of a “u” with a dot on top of it as it does when it stands alone, as mentioned above.
Speaking of all of these connections, it’s important to know that some Arabic letters can only be connected from the right side. These letters are:
أ\و\د\ذ\ر\ز
Likewise, there are some Arabic letters that can be connected from both sides. They are:
ب\ت\ث\ج\ح\خ\س\ش\ص\ض\ط\ظ\ع\غ\ف\ق\ك\ل\م\ن\ه\ي
ن /noon/ is disconnected from the right when it is preceded by letters from the first group as in زَيتون /zaytoon/ “olives” where waw (و) falls in the first group.
As seen above ن /noon/ falls into the group that can be connected from both sides. As a result, we can also conclude that ن /noon/ can be connected from the right when it is preceded by letters from the second group as in بِنت/bint/ “girl” where baa (ب) falls in the second group.
See the table below for a summary and notice how the letters are connected or not:
Well, that’s all there is to say about the letter ن /noon/.
See? Learning the Arabic alphabet really is as easy as learning your ABCs especially when you’re learning Arabic the right way with the Kaleela Arabic language learning app.
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