Fanfoon فنفون
One of the first surprises for parents is that Arabic letters change shape. The letter baa can look like ب, بـ, ـبـ or ـب. It's still the same letter, just joined up differently. Here's how it works.
Arabic is joined-up writing
Like handwriting in English, Arabic letters in a word join to each other. To make the joins flow, most letters have four shapes:
The core of the letter, and especially its dots, stays the same. That's the clue to give your child: "look for the dot under the boat".
The six letters that never join forwards
Six letters join to the letter before them but never to the letter after: ا د ذ ر ز و (alif, daal, dhaal, raa, zaay and waaw). So they only have two shapes, alone and at the end, and the next letter starts fresh after them. That's why a word like وَرْدَة (rose) has gaps in it.
Some letters change more than others
Most letters just lose or gain a tail, but a few look quite different at the start of a word. Ha is the biggest surprise: ه alone, هـ at the start and ـهـ in the middle. Ayn closes up in the middle (ـعـ), and kaaf loses its little squiggle (كـ).
How to teach it
- Start with the "alone" shape. Learn the letter's sound and alone shape first. Shapes come later, usually from age 4 or 5.
- Make it a dressing-up game. In Fanfoon, letters put on "costumes" for the start, middle and end. Children find it far less confusing when the letter is the same character in a different outfit.
- Hunt in real words. Write a short word like بَاب (door) and ask your child to find both baa's. One is at the start, one at the end.
- Trace all the shapes. Each of our free letter worksheets has a page with the letter's shapes to trace.
Every letter page in our Arabic alphabet guide shows that letter's shapes side by side.