Welcome to the Alphabet 3 skill in Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic. The Alphabet 3 skill does not introduce any new letters. What it does present are new shapes of some letters you have already learned. However, I have already discussed these shapes in my page on Alphabet 2. For this reason, only a couple of things will be presented here. Please just review the material on the Alphabet 2 page, especially concerning the different shapes of the letters. The official Tips and Notes for this skill can be found here.
Five place names
In this skill, five different place names are introduced, chosen not so much due to their relevance for the Arab world, but due to the fact that they are spelled with letters you have learned. Here they are. Note that their actual pronunciation can deviate a bit to the way they are spelled in Arabic due to the fact that they are loanwords.
| كوبا |
| kuubaa |
| ‘Cuba’ |
| بيرو |
| biru |
| ‘Peru’ |
| جوبا |
| juubaa |
| ‘Juba (capital of South Sudan)’ |
| داكار |
| daakaar |
| ‘Dakar (capital of Senegal)’ |
| باكو |
| baakuu |
| ‘Baku (capital of Azerbaijan)’ |
وَ wa ‘and’
As presented in the previous skill, the Arabic word for ‘and’ is وَ wa. This is a one-letter word. And in Arabic one-letter words are always connected to the following word. So, in a well-written Arabic text, no space will come between the word and the next, as in this example:
| جوبا وَداكار |
| juubaa wa daakaar |
| ‘Juba and Dakar’ |
Duolingo asks specific questions about this in this skill. Here is an example using وَ wa. So, if two possible choices look about the same, choose the one without a space after وَ wa.
Good luck!
I hope that this page gave you a better understanding of the material presented in the Alphabet 3 skill. Here’s your link back to Dr. Bulbul’s Guide to Duolingo Arabic.
For your convenience, here is a brief summary of the entire Arabic writing system on the Bite-Size Arabic website.
If you would prefer a more structured presentation of the alphabet than that given in the Duolingo course, why not consider working through my book Bite-Size Arabic?
