«Al» article
In the last lesson, we dealt with the topic of hamzah. The topic of this lesson is quite closely related to the previous one, that is the connecting hamza.
The definite article «al» is only met at the beginning of a word and has certain reading rules.
For the start, we need to know that all the letter of the Arabic alphabet are split into two groups: The so-called
1. Sun letters (الشمس — Ash-Shams letters)
2. Moon letters (القمر — Al-Qamar letters)
The good news is that the letters are divided exactly in half in both groups:
14 sun letters and 14 moon letters.
The sun letters are:
1. ta —
2. sa —
3. dal —
4. dhal —
5. ra —
6. zay —
7. seen —
8. sheen —
9. sawd —
10. dawd —
11. taaw —
12. thaw —
13. laam —
14. noon —
The moon letters are:
1. alif —
2. ba —
3. jim —
4. haa —
5. khaa —
6. ain —
7. ghain —
8. fa —
9. qaaf —
10. kaaf —
11. meem —
12. ha —
13. waaw —
14. yaa —
Before we get to the rule itself, let's take a close look at these two words:
Pay attention to how the announcer reads the two words. In the first case, the letter laam is skipped, i.e. it is not read, and the letter «sheen» following it is doubled, as a result we get «ash-shamsu». In the second word, the announcer pronounced the letter «laam» and did not double the letter «qaaf» following it, as in the first case. As a result, the second word is read «al-qamaru»
And now let's take a look at the rule:
If there is a sun letter after the article «al», then we do not read «laam» in the article «al» and double the sun letter following the article. If there is one of the moon letters after the article «al», then «laam» is read, and the moon letter following it is not doubled.
Let's look at examples of how the sun and moon letters are read.
The moon letters:
The sun letters:
By the way, we do not have to memorize the moon and sun letters right away as there is a hint for us in the Quran by which we can understand which letter comes after the article al (the sun or moon letter) and how to read the word. This hint is the sukoon symbol standing above the letter «laam» in the article «al». If there is a sukoon above the «laam», then we have to read the letter «laam». If there is no sukoon, it is a sign that the next letter after the article is a sun letter, and we, following the rule, skip the «laam» and double the letter following it.
There is something else that we need to examine and that is how the article «al» is read in conjunction with other words (when there is a word preceding the word with the article). Let's see a few examples where there are two words, the second of which has the article «al».