Arabic Letters: Alphabet, Forms, Pronunciation & Transliteration

The Arabic alphabet has 28 basic letters, written from right to left. Most Arabic letters take different shapes depending on their position in a word: isolated, initial, medial, and final. Explore every Arabic letter with its forms, name, Latin transliteration, and connection rules below.

Arabic Letter Forms: Isolated, Initial, Medial and Final

Arabic is a cursive script, so a single letter's shape isn't fixed — it depends entirely on its neighbors, the same way handwritten joined-up cursive looks different from printed block letters.

• Isolated — the letter standing on its own, not connected to anything (the form shown in a dictionary or alphabet chart).
• Initial — at the start of a word, connecting only to the letter that follows.
• Medial — in the middle of a word, connecting to the letters on both sides.
• Final — at the end of a word, connecting only to the letter before it.

Arabic Letters in English: Transliteration Guide

Translating Arabic letters into English isn't really translation — it's transliteration, mapping each Arabic letter to the Latin letter (or combination) closest to its sound, as already shown in the Latin column of the table above. Standard transliteration uses Latin letters or combinations such as kh and gh. In informal Arabizi, numbers are also commonly used instead — for example, 3 for ع and 7 for ح.

Sun Letters and Moon Letters in Arabic

The 28 Arabic letters are traditionally split into 14 "sun letters" and 14 "moon letters" — a classification that changes how the definite article ال (al-, "the") is pronounced, though never how it's spelled.