The first lesson · nothing withheld
This is where everyone starts.
Not a metaphor for beginning — the actual opening of the class, whether you are nineteen or seventy. The letters, the four shapes each one takes, the three short vowels, and the five places in the mouth where all of it is made.
There is no audio on this page yet. The recordings are being made and they will attach here when they exist, on the letters and on each of the five zones below.
We are not going to put up a play button that does nothing, and we are not going to describe a sound in writing and pretend that is the same thing. Everything below is real and complete as written; the audio is the part that is missing, so the page says so.
Part one
Twenty-eight letters, by name and by sound.
Tap any letter to read its name and where in the mouth it is made. Most of the first few weeks of the class is spent right here — on the mouth, not on memorising the chart.
alifā
A carrier rather than a sound of its own — it lengthens the fatḥah before it. The hamzah ء it often sits under is made at the deepest part of the throat.
The empty spaceSet in Amiri, as live type rather than a scan of somebody's printed qāʿidah. The standard editions are under copyright and their own notices forbid reproduction — so this is ours outright, it resizes to your screen, and it works in both themes. If you want the printed book, we will tell you which edition to buy.
Part two
One letter, four shapes.
This is the lesson that turns shapes back into reading. The letter that looks unfamiliar in the middle of a word is the same letter you already learned — it is just holding hands on both sides.
Six letters break this rule — ا د ذ ر ز و never join to the letter after them, which is why words seem to have gaps in the middle of them. That single fact removes most of the confusion people carry for years.
Where most self-teaching breaks
An adult who learned the twenty-eight letters from an app or a chart usually stalls exactly here. The letters were learned in their alone shape, and then a real word arrives with none of them in it.
It takes about one session with a teacher and roughly a month on your own. It does not take a year, and it is not a sign you are slow.
Part three
Then the three marks that make it speech.
Three small marks, and the letters start to sound like the words you have been standing in prayer with your whole life.
The short vowels
And then the long ones
Each long vowel is its short vowel held for twice the time — not a different sound, a longer one. Holding it correctly is already the beginning of tajwīd, which is why the two are not really separate subjects.
The part that needs a teacher
Every letter is made somewhere. Five somewheres.
The classical scholars mapped seventeen exact points of articulation inside five zones. You do not need the seventeen to begin — you need to know that a letter has a place, and that yours is either on it or near it.
The throat
الحَلْقThree depths — deepest, middle, nearest — and six letters between them. This is the zone English does not have, and the one that gives away whether somebody was taught or is guessing. ح becomes ه, ع disappears entirely, ق softens into a k.
Six letters · three depthsThe tongue
اللِّسانTen of the seventeen points and eighteen of the letters — the deepest part against the soft palate, the middle against the roof, the edges against the molars, and the tip against the teeth and gums. Most of the corrections in a class happen inside this zone.
Eighteen letters · ten pointsThe two lips
الشَّفَتانThe easiest zone to reach and the easiest to be lazy in. و needs the lips genuinely rounded and not touching; م needs them fully closed, or the sound that should run through the nose does not.
Four lettersThe empty space
الجَوْفNot a contact point at all — the open cavity of the mouth and throat, where the three long vowels live. و and ي appear here as well as above, because each is a consonant in one place and a lengthening in another. That is not a contradiction; it is the same letter doing two jobs.
Three long vowelsThe nose
الخَيْشُومA zone with no letters of its own. It is where the ghunnah is made — the held nasal sound in نّ and مّ, and in half the rules of tajwīd later on. Pinch your nose and say it; if nothing changes, it is not there.
No letters · one soundWhat the live hour actually is
You have just read the lesson. The class is the part where you are heard.
Everything above can be studied from this page for free, and you are welcome to. What a page cannot do is notice that your ḍād is coming out as a dāl, tell you which edge of the tongue to move, and make you say it eleven more times until it lands.
So a session looks like this
A short piece of new material, then most of the hour is students reading out loud one at a time while everyone else follows. You are corrected on the spot, by name, without being embarrassed — and then the recording is yours to go over again in the week.