Thursday, April 16, 2009

How to Read & Write Arabic 12: ZAAY

The letter zaay, like raa, is written in two ways; as an independent and as a connector with the previous letter:

Independent


Meidal or Final, connecting with previous letter

N.B. The red colour indicates the previous letter

As we've said before, non-connectors never connect with the letter which follows them, which means there will always be a gap following them, even if they occur in the middle of a word. Having learnt these two letters you now know all the non-connecting letters in the Arabic alphabet.


Connector
Here are some examples of the letter zaay when it connects to the letter before it:












Independent

And here is an couple example of the letter zaay when it is written in its independent format:


(Diraz is the name of a tiny village in Bahrain)



Hide & Seek

Here are two photos which contain the letter zaay. See if you can find them and then decide in  which format they occur:







Practice/ Homework
Should you wish to practice writing the letter 'raa':

1. 
Complete the hide and seek activities in the article above
2.
Using lined paper write the letter 'zaay' in its two different forms, as many times as you can; final and independent. Because 'zaay' is a non connector you'll have to write one of the other letters you already know before the 'zaay' in order to connect it. A minimum of 20 repetitions is suggested, always remembering to write the lines first, then the dots.
3. 
Re-read the previous wgaw blog posts {wgaw subject/ labels 'How to Read and Write Arabic} and try to find the letter zaays in the postings. Then decide if raa is in its independent or final format.


Overview
1. The tenth letter of the Arabic alphabet is called, 'zaay'
2. The are two forms of the letter 'zaay'; independent and final
3. Zaay is one of the six non-connectors and never-ever-ever connects with the letter which follows it, even if it occurs in the middle of a word.


What's Next?
Next week we’ll have a break from the alphabet and for a change take a look at the Arabic numerals 0 - 10.



1 comment:

Christine said...

hmm...this hide and seek looks like like fun game:))