Arabic letters and diacritics

The Arabic "alphabet" is not compatible with the English alphabet. There are letters (حروف, huroof) in English, which cannot be transliterated into the Arabic alphabet and vice versa. The word "alphabet" is derived from the words "alpha" and "beta", while Arabic doesn't have a simple letter like "a". So "alphabet" might not be the best way to describe the Arabic letters and abjad is used instead (الأَبْجَدِيَّة العَرَبِيَّة‎‎, al-abjadīyah al-ʻarabīyah, the Arabic abjad).

Although there are letters which represent vowels, they are used only to represent long vowels. The short vowels in words are either indicated by (optional) diacritics, or just not indicated at all and the reader just has to know how to pronounce it. There are two "levels" of diacritics. The first is I‘jām (إِعْجَام), small dots which are considered to be a part of the letter. They were not present in the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts. They are absolutely important as they determine the consonant. For example:

• ب b
• ت t
• ث th

Then there is the next level of diacritics, the harakat (حَرَكَات), which is optional and often not present in the Arabic text. The Arabic word "harakat" حَرَكَات without the harakat, would look like this: حركات. The three little lines above the letter determine the three "a" in harakat.

This article, besides explaining the Arabic abjad, brings a comparison with the English alphabet.

Missing English letters

There are English words, which cannot be pronounced using the Arabic abjad.

E like in America

Arabic abjad cannot express the word "America", since it doesn't have a letter corresponding to the "e" sound. So Arabs drop the "e" between "m" and "r" and pronounce this word as "Amreeka" (أمريكا).

O like in Europe

The letter o has no equivalent in the Arabic abjad. Arabs have to say "Awruba" (أوروبا).

P like in Europe

There is no letter P in the Arabic abjad. Arabs have to say "Awruba" (أوروبا).