Does Arabic have vowels? Certainly! But very few compared to English. Is there an Arabic word without a vowel? Hmm! Probably not. The vowel is the center of the word and/or syllable. Put differently, vowels are the crutches of consonants. So, what is the story of vowels in Arabic and how do they crutch consonants?

During your Arabic learning to date, you probably have encountered the word tashkeel تَشْكِيل ‘addition of diacritics.’ تَشْكِيل  comes from the word شَكَلَ ‘to shackle.’ Originally, Arabs used it with pack animals. A pack animal was to be tied up in a particular way so that it would not run away or could be ridden with ease. As to the language, تَشْكِيل is to ‘shackle’ letters so that they are not mispronounced resulting in an utterly different meaning, from what is intended. While pack animals are ‘shackled’ with a chain or a rope, letters are ‘shackled’ with Harakaat حَرَكَات ‘short vowels’; namely, فَتْحَة, كَسْرَة, and ضَمَّة. For instance, accompanied with ضَمَّة, ـمـ in جمل would be pronounced جَمُلَ ‘to become beautiful’ rather than جَمَلَ ‘to calculate’ or جَمَل ‘camel.’

The story of تَشْكِيل dates back to the first century of Islam. It has its roots in language use and incomprehensible speech of non-Arabs.

Tersely, in pre-Islamic written form of Arabic, تَشْكِيل and even dots on/below the letters were not used. Arabs among themselves could figure out the meaning of words/texts using their memory, intuition, or the context. After the Islamic conquests, non-Arabs converted into Islam in large numbers; mispronunciation and grammatical mistakes became widespread. This had meaning-related consequences; therefore, تَشْكِيل was introduced.

Generally, تَشْكِيل includes the diacritical marks that I explained earlier. However, short vowels are the most crucial as they cause meaning-related contrasts between words; e.g., in English, ‘bed’, ‘bid’, ‘bad’, and ‘bud’ are different words due to vowel change. Similarly, a change in a short vowel that accompanies the letter in the same Arabic word results in a new meaning, as in these examples:

Word-finally, short vowels are grammatically significant. That is, the short vowel /a/, i.e. فَتْحَة, indicates that the noun is the receiver of action; the short vowel /u/, i.e. ضَمَّة, indicates that the nouns is the doer of the action. This makes word order more flexible, as is the case with Classical Arabic (CA). To illustrate, look at these example sentences.

Under (B), the five different sentence variants have the same meaning thanks to the short vowels which indicate who does what to whom; thus, word order becomes insignificant. Conversely, it is through word order that we know who does what to whom under (A), which is the case in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

MSA has become word-order-based because most Arabs have lost the knack of intuitively assigning the correct short vowels to word-endings. Consequently, they resort to waqf ‘pronouncing words with final sukoon’ which leads to disjoining the words from subsequent words’. This makes speech less natural. For example, the phrase بَيْتُ الشَّيْخ ‘the sheikh’s house’ should be naturally connected, and thus, pronounced as one word, i.e. بَيْتُشَّيْخ; however, this is not the case in spoken Arabic today.

While Arabs have lost the ability to assign the correct short vowels to the ends of words, assigning them word-internally is still intact. With exception of Arabic language textbooks in schools, especially elementary and primary, تَشْكِيل is no longer added to the written word.

In the table above, in CA, words are fully decorated with short vowels. MSA is completely devoid of it, however. In newspapers and books what you see and read is the MSA version. Like I underscored earlier, for you as a foreign learner of Arabic it is essential that you fully learn the CA version, particularly at the word-internal level. A good way to perfect your skill on this is to assign short vowels to every new word you learn.

Apart from short vowels, Arabic has long vowels. As to speech, they are simply prolongation of short vowels, so they are called Harakaat Taweelah حَرَكَات طَوِيلَة ‘long vowels.’ In written form, they are represented by letters. That is, فَتْحَة is prolonged to become ا /a:/; كَسْرَة is prolonged to become ـيـ /i:/; and ضَمَّة is prolonged to become و /u:/. Long vowels are not as meaning-bearing as short ones, as in this list.

Thus, long vowels in Arabic are easier to learn and less meaning-bearing. In a future post, I will elaborate upon their significance in Arabic word-formation.