Harakat Practice: Read Letters With Vowels

Arabic letters on their own are only consonants. The short vowels are written as small marks, and learning to read them quickly is the step between knowing the alphabet and reading real words. This drill shows a random letter with a random mark from the ones you have ticked, and you read it aloud before you check. Reading aloud matters: silently recognising a shape is much easier than saying it, and saying it is the skill you need in the Quran.

Start small. Begin with fatha, kasra and damma only. When you can read them without hesitation, add sukoon, which closes a syllable (“bat”), then shaddah, which doubles a letter (“rab-ba”), and finally the three tanween marks, which add an “n” at the end of a word. The drill builds sukoon and shaddah as two-letter combinations, because those marks only make sense next to another letter. Where the second letter would be a long vowel (و or ي), the drill avoids sukoon, since that belongs to the madd rules instead.

Common mistakes. Learners often rush the vowel and stretch it into a long sound, so “ba” becomes “baa”; a short vowel should be short. Another frequent slip is skipping the doubled sound of a shaddah, or reading a sukoon letter with a vowel. Tanween is often mistaken for a long vowel, but it is a short vowel plus “n”. Mixing up the light and heavy letters (س and ص, ت and ط) is also very common, and the shape of the mouth cannot be learned from text.

When a live teacher helps. The drill tells you what the reading should be, but only a listener can tell you whether your vowel is the right length and your heavy letters are heavy. In a one-to-one class a teacher hears each syllable and corrects it straight away, which is the heart of our Noorani Qaida course. Pair this page with the Arabic letter quiz if you are still learning the letters, with the printable Noorani Qaida chart for a one-page reference, and with the tajweed cheat sheet once you start reading verses. See pricing, or book a free trial and let a teacher listen to you read.