The Importance of Aalim Book for kids “2”

In their morphological study, the E-aalim have their team of researchers. Their think tank and work team for kids have proceeded to study more, extra and additional suprasegmental phonemes. In Arabic, we call a consonant sound without one of the three (Harakat) Sakin letter. It doesn’t have , fatihah, Kaserah or Dammah. This is is a syllabic consonant sound. We  give it the name of (Sakin), which many people mistranslated  as a consonant. However, we represent the idea of such a given letter. It has no Fatihah, Kaserah or Dammah above it. We draw a tiny zero ( Ra’as Haa) mark over the very letter like this: (  سْ  ). We only pronounce it as just a / s / sound . It doesn’t have a following consonant; / a /, / e /, / i /, / o / or / u /. This is very important when teaching the Arabic alphabet for kids.

  Teachers for kids teach their kid students that stressed consonant sound is the sound which we give extra and additional power and duration at the moment of pronouncing that consonant sound. We teach kids to call such a stressed sound (Mushaddad) in Arabic.  However, the Arab linguists have analyzed the stressed consonant sound and come up with the conclusion that: In fact, the stressed consonant sound consists basically of two identical consonant sounds. The first consonant is a Sakin sound. The second consonant has one of the three short (Harakat). The Arab linguists have called such a stressed consonant sound (Al-Mushaddad). So we have Mushaddad with Fatihah (  َّ ), Mushaddad with Kaserah (  ِّ ) and Mushaddad with Dammah like this: (  ُّ ), (  سَّ ) و(  سِّ )and ( سُّ ) . We teach it to kids.

 What is (Tanween) in Arabic?

We also teach our kids the rule of Tanween. There is an important grammatical rule in Arabic, which we teach to kids. It states that most indefinite singular nouns, plural feminines  and adjectives can have (Tanween). Tanween is to add an additional syllabic  / n / consonant sound to the end of the word. Given the fact that a certain word, a noun or an adjective can end with a Fatihah (  سً  ), which we pronounce as / san /,a Kasera  ( سٍ  ), which we pronounce as / sen / or / sin / or a Dammah (   سٌ  ), which we pronounce as / son / or  / sun /.

So we have Tanween with FATH  (  سً ), Tanween with Kasr (   سٍ  ) and Tanween with Damm (   سٌ ). We simply represent the idea of tanween in each case by doubling the short (Harakat). So, we represent Tanween with fatih  by drawing double Fatiha over the given last letter (  ً ). We represent Tanween with Kasr by drawing double Kasra under the given last letter (  ٍ  ). We represent Tanween with Dammah is drawing double Dammah on the given last letter (  ٌ  ), like this: (  سً  ) / san / ,  (  سٍ  )  / sen / or / sin / and (  سٌ  ) / son / or / sun /.

     The Arabic vowels and semivowels

We teach our kids also the Arabic vowels and semivowels. There are only three vowel sounds represented by three vowel letters. These vowels are Alif which stands for the long English vowel sound / a: /, Yaa’ which stands for the long English vowel sound / e: / and Waw which stands for the long English vowel sound / u: /. In this way, we teach our kids the Madd vowel letters. It is very important to note that for the three vowel sounds to be as such, it is a must that Fatihah precedes the Alif, Kasra precedes the Yaa’ is preceded and Dammah precedes the Waw. Otherwise, those three letters become the semi-vowels of /  ء  /, /  j  / and /  w  .

Stressed and unstressed long syllables:

 Finally, it is very important to notice that we call a stressed consonant Mushaddad syllable and we call a stressed long vowel a long Mushaddad syllable in Arabic. In the E-aalim Mushaf, we have colored the long unstressed syllables in red. We have colored the long stressed syllables in dark green.