Thursday, June 18, 2009

Saudi Dance

Here's a video of the song, 'Smooth Criminal' by Micheal Jackson, with Saudi style traditional dancing :-)

Saturday, June 6, 2009

hijabs

I never know if these pictures are real or 'set ups'.  Maybe you can decide?





Thursday, June 4, 2009

How to Read & Write Arabic 17: DHaa

This week's letter, DHaa looks very similar to last week's letter, TTaa


Speaking DHaa
Like TTaa, the sound for DHaa needs to come from your lungs rather than from your mouth. Again use the same technique you used to make the sound TTaa, but this time begin with the sound 'D'. The sound for the letter DHaa is always low and long.

Remember; keep the sound as low as possible and keep your tongue on the back of your two front teeth whilst you make the sound.

To help you remember the sound, the word Ram-a-DHan conatins this letter.


Writing DHaa
DHaa is written in exactly the same way as TTaa - a loop followed by a vertical stroke, but it has an additional dot, like Daa. Notice where the dot sits above the loop and make sure your dot sits in the same place.

Again, because this is a letter which connects with the following letter, there are four different ways of writing DHaa, independent, initial, medial and final. You should be able to work out from the three images given, how to write DHaa. Try to work it out and I'll upload the image next week.

So, DHaa looks like this:

Initial




Medial




Final




In the photos below you'll see various public signs containing the letter DHaa, having learnt Saad, Daad, Ttaa and now DHaa it should be quite an easy session this week!


Initial





staff = [moo-DHaa-if-feen]




Medial






Final
Unfortuantely I couldn't find any road signs with a final DHaa. I'll keep looking and when I find one, I'll post it here.


Hide & Seek
See how many letters in the form of DHaa you can find in the photos below:








What's Next?
This weeks article completes this particular group of four letters. Next week we'll look at the next letter of the alphabet, ayn.