What Is Tanween in Arabic? Understanding Double Vowel Marks - Lesson 3

Introduction

In this second lesson to learn Arabic, we discover a new type of vowel used to vocalize consonants. Previously, we studied the short vowels of the Arabic alphabet. We will now study the end-of-word vowels, also called tanween in Arabic.

Double vowels are signs that appear only at the end of words. They are formed from short vowels with the addition of the sound “N.” For example, the short vowel “ou” becomes the double vowel “oune,” the short vowel “a” becomes “ane,” and the short vowel “i” becomes “ine.”

The three types of Tanween

The double vowel “oune” is called dammatan in Arabic:

ٌ

The double vowel “ine” is called kasratan in Arabic:

ـٍ

The double vowel “ane” is called fathatan in Arabic:

ـًا

These end-of-word double vowels are called tanween in Arabic. The tanween is mainly used to indicate whether a noun is definite or indefinite. At this stage, it is not necessary to understand its grammatical usage, but it is important to know how to read it correctly.

Note: you will notice that double vowels are formed by repeating the same vowel, except for the double fatha, called fathatan (ً), composed of two fatha followed by an alif (ا). There is one exception, however: when the double fatha (fathatan) is the vowel of the letter ةً, the final alif is not added.

Table of Arabic letters with Tanween

You can listen below to all the Arabic alphabet letters carrying end-of-word double vowels (tanween):

In the next lesson, we will learn about the long vowels in the Arabic language, insha’Allah.

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