Habiibii, Hayaati, and Hayawaan all start with the letter ح, the sound does not exist in English.
With your mouth open, make a raspy, breathy sound as if you're breathing on glass to fog it up. You wanna constrict the muscles inside your throat so that air can just barely squeeze through.
Your vocal cords should not vibrate.
We transliterate ح as a capital H, so as not to be confused with the h sound in English.
| Transliteration | Eng | عَرَبي |
|---|---|---|
| Habiibii | my love (masc.) | حَبيبي |
| Hayaatii | my life | حَياتي |
| ruHii | my soul | روحي |
| Hayawaan | animal (masc.) | حَيوان |
Imagine you just swallowed a spoonful of very hot chili. And yes when ح is the initial letter it looks like this حـ, so that we can connect the following letter to it. Remember, Arabic is written from Right to Left.
Habiibtii
حَبيبتي my love (fem.)
Check the colloquial (Egyptian) pronunciation here
Possessive pronouns
In Arabic, possessive pronouns (like "my") are attached to the end of the word. To say "my love" you just attach the letter ي to the word حَبيب (love, beloved) = حَبيبي
is there a good textbook you can recommend? I need some exercises or something to engage with, simply reading will not have me remember anything.
Also I love homework.
I'm gonna include exercises for sure, but for now it's kinda too early for us to be able to do that.
I know this might be a bit shocking but I'd say no there ain't, because Arabic gets very little attention from the language learning industry and a lot of the material is aimed at "diplomats" wink wink, that is why I make the material myself. But when it comes to the alphabet I guess any book will do, maybe check Alif Baa Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds.
Edit: By material I mean the pdfs I share with my students, not these posts.
thats what my arabic teacher also said when I took some classes a couple years ago, was hoping the situation is different in english...