The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters, all representing consonant sounds (three of them — ا و ي — also serve as long vowels). It's written and read right to left, in a fully cursive script where letters connect to their neighbors, similar in spirit to joined handwriting in English but built into the standard printed form of the language.
Because the script is cursive, most Arabic letters change shape slightly depending on whether they appear at the start, middle, or end of a word, or stand alone. This sounds intimidating at first, but it follows consistent, learnable rules — once you've seen a letter's four forms a few times, recognizing it stops requiring conscious effort, the same way cursive capital and lowercase letters eventually stop requiring thought in English.
Arabic has no uppercase/lowercase distinction whatsoever. Every letter has exactly one identity — its shape simply adapts to position in a word, not to grammatical role (like starting a sentence or a proper noun, the way English capitalization works). This removes an entire memorization category compared to Latin-alphabet languages.
Arabic's three short vowel sounds are written as small marks (harakat) above or below a letter, not as separate letters in the main alphabet. In everyday adult reading material — newspapers, novels, signage — these marks are usually left out entirely, because fluent readers infer the vowels from context, much like an experienced English reader doesn't need every word spelled phonetically. Learning material for beginners, including Tarc's early lessons, typically keeps the marks in to make pronunciation unambiguous while you're still building that instinct.
The Arabic course's first unit is the alphabet itself — letter shapes, their positional forms, and pronunciation — before any vocabulary or grammar. Each letter is introduced with audio, so you learn the sound and the shape together rather than the shape in isolation.
28 letters. All 28 represent consonants (plus the long vowel sounds ا, و, and ي); short vowels are shown with optional marks called harakat rather than separate letters.
Arabic script is cursive by design — nearly every letter connects to its neighbors, so most letters have up to four forms (isolated, initial, medial, and final) depending on their position in a word. This is a normal, learnable pattern, not an exception — once you learn a letter's shape logic, it applies consistently.
No. Arabic has no case distinction at all — no uppercase or lowercase forms, which removes one entire category of memorization compared to the Latin alphabet.
Most learners can recognize and write all 28 letters within one to two weeks of short daily practice, though reading fluently (including recognizing letters in their different positional forms at speed) takes longer. Tarc's course opens with the alphabet as Unit 1 specifically so this stage isn't rushed.
See also: Learn Arabic · Arabic Numbers · Arabic Vocabulary