There are three Arabic vowels and their three strong forms (Tanween, i.e. adding "N"). The first is the Fat'ha, which maybe expressed in English by the sound / a /, with its strong form of / an /. The second is the Kassra, which maybe expressed by the sound / i /, with its strong form of / in /. The third Arabic vowel is the Dhamma, which maybe expressed by the sound / u /, with its strong form of / un /.

Following Arabic grammatical rules, a common name such as "Ahmed" (or Ahmad) maybe written and pronounced as Ahmada, Ahmadan, Ahmadi, Ahmadin, Ahmadu, and Ahmadun.

While all these six vowel forms are written in the Arabic text of the Holy Quran, not all of them are pronounced in recitation, particularly at the end of each verse. However, they maybe pronounced when several verses are continuously recited.

Arabic written words are mainly composed of consonants, vowels are added as symbols over or under a letter, as in the case of the text of the Holy Quran. However, in books and written media, only basic consonants and essential vowels are written as letters. No vowel symbols are added, as it is expected from an average educated Arabic speaker to know how to pronounce the words without vowel symbols.

Underlined letters in the Quran transliteration

Some Arabic letters and sounds have no counterparts in the English alphabet and the English phonetic transcription. There are nine Arabic sounds which have no equivalence in the English alphabet. These are ( ح خ ص ض ط ظ ع غ ق ). Some translators underline the closest English letters to these Arabic letters, in order to tell readers that these are pronounced differently in Arabic. The closest sounds expressing the Arabic letters in parentheses, from right to left, are ( h, kh, s, dh, t, tdh, a, gh, q ). However, underlining them as ( h, kh, s, dh, t, tdh, a, gh, q ) conveys the message that these are different from the English sounds expressed by the letters of the English alphabet.

The two Arabic letters and sounds of Tha ( ث ) and Dhal ( ذ ), expressed by the two English letters "th" at the beginning of the English words "three" and "that," are transliterated as / th / and / th /, respectively.

This author uses this same method of underlining these letters, with the exception of the two Arabic letters expressed by the / h / and / a / sounds. Instead of underlining them, he adds an apostrophe before the letter to become / 'h / and / 'a / respectively. Using an apostrophe instead of underling a letter is for practical reasons only. First, these two letters are more frequently used than the other letters in the list. Second, it is easier to use the apostrophe on keyboards than adding underlining after writing.

As an example, an apostrophe is used before the English letter / a / to express the eighteenth letter of the Arabic alphabet / 'ayn /, as in the case of translating the Good Name of God, Al-'Azeez, the tenth on the list.

An apostrophe is also used before the English letter / h / to express the sixth letter of the Arabic alphabet / 'ha /, as in the case of translating the Good Name of God, Al-A'had,

The above usage of an apostrophe to help express the Arabic sound / 'a / may not be enough if the sound occurs at the end of a word, such as in the case of the Good Name of God, number 30, "Al-Samee'u." This Good Name of God is pronounced as "Al-Samee' " without conjugation. However, because the sound / 'a / occurs at the end of the word, the pronunciation may become distorted as / as-samee'a / instead of / as-samee ' /. As a solution, this author is using the conjugated form of the noun as a subject to become / as-samee'u /, the closest to the Arabic pronunciation.

====================================

* Dr. Hassan Ali El-Najjar has a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Georgia, USA. He is also a native speaker of Arabic. He was born in Gaza, Palestine, in 1369 Hijriya, 1950 AD.