How to Read & Write Arabic: o6 JIMM

Now you've completed the first four letters of the arabic alphabet, and seen the alphabet in its entirity, we'll move onto the fifth letter of the Arabic alphabet, 'Jiim'.

Jiim
Jiim is the first letter of the alphabet which has no equivalent sound in English. However, Jiim is prounoucd as it sounds, and can be easily bastardised, sound-wise, by us native English speakers by saying 'J' as we do in English.

Pronounce 'Jiim' in the same way as you would the 'J' in, Jack or the 'dg' in 'bridge'. In English I've written the letter Jiim with a capital letter to indicate it has a strong sound.

Jiim: Reading and Writing
As you now know for sure, Arabic letters change their form slightly depending on where they occur in the word (independent, initial, medial, or final). So Jimm, like all the previous letters, will keep it's basic format no matter where it occurs in a word.

A 'Jiim' can be spotted because it has a jaw shape, as well as one dot above the line you write on.

Below you'll see the letter Jiim in each of the four positions (read from right to left; Independent, Initial, Medial, Final) and remember the lines are always drawn before the dot:



Examples of the Letter, 'Jiim'

Initial
In the first two examples below, Jiim starts the word and in the third example, 'conference room' is located in the middle of a word aljatimaat/conference [al-ja-tee-maa-aHa-t], but follows a non-connector, so is in the initial form:








Medial
Below are a couple of examples of the letter 'Jiim' placed in the middle of a word:





TASK 1
How many alif's can you find in the photos above? In what form do they occur; independent, initial, medial or final?


Final
In the following example Jiim is written in its final form and can be found at the end of the directions for a small village in Bahrain, Samaheej.




Independent








TASK 2
Decide which of the photos below contain additional examples of the five letters you now know; alif, baa, taa, thaa and Jiim. When you’ve found them decide in which format they are written; initial, medial, final or independent and then total your amounts for each photo:






Overview
1. The fifth letter of the Arabic alphabet is called 'Jiim'
2. The are four different forms of the letter Jiim; independent, initial, medial and final
3. The letter Jiim changes its form depending on its location in the word, but the basic structure is always the same; one dot above the jaw shaped line
4. Jiim is a connector and so joins with the letter which follows it.


Practice/ Homework [tam-reen/ waa-jib]
Should you wish to practice writing the letter 'Jiim':
1. Complete all the tasks in the article above
2. Using lined paper write the letter 'Jiim' in all four forms, as many times as you can; initial, medial, final and independent. Because Jiim is a connector you'll be able to connect a Jiim in its initial form to a Jiim in its medial form and complete by writing a Jiim in its final form. A minimum of 20 repetitions is suggested, always remembering to write the lines first and then the dots.


What's Next?
The next letter of the Arabic alphabet is 'Haa' and will be posted on Thursday 26th February