Reading · Lesson 3 · 6 min
The Long Vowels
Alif, wāw, yāʾ — Hebrew's אמות הקריאה in Arabic dress
Short vowels are little marks. Long vowels are real letters, written on the line as part of the word: ا stretches a into ā, و stretches u into ū, and ي stretches i into ī. Unlike the ḥarakāt, these never disappear — they are spelled even in bare newspaper text, which makes them the reader's best friends.
| Vowel | Arabic letter | Hebrew mater | Example | Say it | Hebrew echo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ā | ا | א | بَاب | bāb | אַבָּא, סָבְתָא |
| ū | و | ו | سُوق | sūq | שׁוּק |
| ī | ي | י | دِين | dīn | דִּין |
Long-vowel cognates
- سُوقסוקsūq
market
שׁוּק شُوكshuk
A shared loan rather than an inherited cognate: Akkadian sūqu 'street' entered Aramaic as שוקא and travelled from there into both languages. The ū is written with و, exactly as Hebrew writes it with ו.
- دِينדיןdīn
religion; judgment
דִּין دِينdin
Arabic dīn spans both courtroom and creed — يَوْم الدِّين, 'the Day of Judgment', is יום הדין word for word.
- نُورנורnūr
light
נֵר نِرner
Root n-w-r: Hebrew נֵר (lamp) and מְנוֹרָה glow from the same root.
- كَبِيرכבירkabīr
big
כַּבִּיר كَابِيرkabir
Biblical Hebrew כַּבִּיר, 'mighty', is this exact adjective. Everyday Arabic uses it for plain old 'big' — بيت كبير, a big house.
Alif in disguise
Alif has costumes of its own, and they only appear in fixed places — like Hebrew final letters, they are position tricks, not new sounds. The first: alif maqṣūra ى, a dotless yāʾ that appears only at the end of a word and reads as ā.
Alif maqṣūra — the ā dressed as a י
- عَلَىעלאʿalā
on, upon
עַל أَلal
The same preposition as Hebrew עַל. Ends in ā, written ى.
- إِلَىאלאilā
to, toward
אֶל إِلel
The same preposition as Hebrew אֶל, with the ā tail.
- مُوسَىמוסאmūsā
Moses
מֹשֶׁה مُوشِيmoshe
The most famous alif maqṣūra there is: מֹשֶׁה in his Arabic passport.
The second costume: alif madda آ — a hamza (glottal stop, next lesson) fused with a long ā into one letter with a wavy hat. You see it in الْقُرْآن (al-qurʾān) and in آسِف (āsif, 'sorry' — yes, it sounds like the name אסף).
The third is the dagger alif: in a handful of very old, very common words, the ā is real but the alif is not written on the line — at most a tiny dagger stroke floats above: اَللّٰه (allāh), هٰذَا (hādhā, 'this'), لٰكِن (lākin, 'but'). The vowel is pronounced full length; the spelling is simply ancient.
The famous hidden alifs
- اَللّٰهאללהallāh
God
אֱלוֹהַּ إِلُوَاهeloah
The same Semitic word as אֱלוֹהַּ. The ā after the doubled l is a dagger alif — and notice that Hebrew hides a vowel in the very same word: אֱלֹהִים is written without its ו. Both languages spell God חסר.
- هٰذَاהאד'אhādhā
this (masculine)
הַזֶּה هَازِيhaze
hā + dhā: a pointing ha- (compare הִנֵּה) plus a demonstrative that is cognate with זֶה — Arabic ذ answers Hebrew ז. The first ā hides as a dagger.
- الْقُرْآنאל-קראןal-qurʾān
the Quran
מִקְרָא مِكْرَاmikra
Root q-r-ʾ, 'to read, to call out' — Hebrew קָרָא. The Tanakh is המִקְרָא and the Quran is القرآن: both traditions named their scripture 'the Reading' from the same root. The madda آ carries hamza plus ā in one glyph.