Short vowels: reading with harakat
Arabic · Key Stage 2 · The School
Three small marks
Fatha sits above a letter and sounds like a short a. Kasra sits below and sounds like a short i. Damma sits above and sounds like a short u. A letter with no vowel mark at all carries sukoon, meaning no vowel sound follows it.
Reading a whole word
كَتَبَ, he wrote, has three fathas: ka-ta-ba. بِنْت, girl, has one kasra then sukoon: bi-nt. Sound out each letter with its mark, left to right within each syllable, right to left across the word.
Marks that often vanish
Children's books and the Quran keep every mark. Newspapers, novels and most adult writing leave them out, because a fluent reader already knows كتب means kataba from context. Beginners rely on the marks; experts barely notice they are gone.
Same letters, different marks, different word
كَتَبَ means he wrote. كُتِبَ means it was written. Same three letters, ك ت ب, in the same order. Only the vowel marks changed — fatha, fatha, fatha became damma, kasra, fatha — and the whole meaning flipped from doing the action to having it done. That is how much three small marks can carry. Try reading three more example words this way, sounding out each mark before you move to the next letter.