Arabic is written from right to left. Most of the letters in Arabic have to be joined together.
However, there are 6 letters which cannot be joined on to any other letter which come after it.

They are ا  د  ذ  ر  ز  و

Lets have a look at some examples.

  قال  باب   you can see from these examples that no letter can join the Alif after it (ا)

ديك  صدق     You can see from these examples that no letter can join the Daal after it (د)

كذب  ذهب     You can see from these examples that no letter can join the Dhaal after it (ذ)

صرخ  عرضهم   You can see from these examples that no letter can join the Raa after it (ر)

فزع   زعتر   You can see from these examples that no letter can join the Zaa after it (ز)

خوف   وحدة    You can see from these examples that no letter can join the Waw after it (و)

 

Why do we need to know this? Sometimes it gets tricky for a beginner to distinguish the letters in a word.

For example, بلب  باب

These two words look the same, So which one has the Alif? If you know that the Alif is one of those letters that no letter can join after it, then this word بلب cannot have an Alif in it. It is actually a Laam (ل). Therefore, this one has the Alif باب

 

بنيان   

Or if we look at this example, The second letter looks very similar to a Dhaal (ذ) or a Zaal (ز)
But it can’t be because this letter is connected, therefore it can only be a noon

 

Lets look at this example لا

It is a tricky one, there are two letters involved, the Alif and the Laam, So is it Alif – Laam or is it Laam Alif?
Well, it can’t be Alif -Laam because we said the Alif cannot join anything after it, therefore it must be Laam Alif.

Here is an example   ثلاثة

You see the laam and Alif .
Practice identifying the letters to get familiar with the language before you proceed to the next lesson