Sun and Moon Letters: Check How al- Joins Any Word

Arabic Grammar Basics > Sun and Moon Letters

Arabic's sun and moon letters are the two halves of the alphabet, 14 letters each, and they decide how you say ال (al-, "the"). Before a sun letter (ت ث د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ل ن) the l goes silent and the letter doubles: ash-shams, the sun. Before a moon letter the l is said: al-qamar, the moon. The spelling never changes.

No Arabic keyboard? Type the word on our online Arabic keyboard and paste it in.

All 28 letters with an example word

Every Arabic letter is either a sun letter or a moon letter. The table gives one common word for each, joined to al-, spelled and vowelled as the headword of its English Wiktionary entry, for example شمس, sun and قمر, moon. Transliteration follows our Arabic alphabet chart (a line over a long vowel, a dot under an emphatic, ʿ for ʿayn, ʾ for hamza), with the article written the way it is said.

The names come from two of these words: al- assimilates in ash-shams (the sun) and stays in al-qamar (the moon), and each group is named after its example, as Wikipedia's article on sun and moon letters explains. The alif row means alif carrying a hamza, the glottal stop, as in الْأَرْض. The l before it is always said.

Why are some letters sun letters?

All 14 sun letters are made with the tip or front of the tongue at or just behind the teeth, the same place the l of al- is made. The tongue is already in position, so the l merges into the next sound and you hear it doubled. Linguists call these coronal consonants, and the same Wikipedia article states the rule that way: the sun letters are the coronal consonants of Classical Arabic, and the moon letters are all the others.

Moon letters are made somewhere else: with the lips (ب م ف و), with the middle of the tongue against the roof of the mouth (ج ي), with the back of the tongue (ك ق خ غ) or in the throat (ح ع ه and hamza). The l has nothing to merge with, so it stays. Say al-kitāb, then ash-shams, and feel where your tongue goes. If the throat or back sounds are new to you, our guide to pronouncing the Arabic letters English does not have shows where each one is made.

Lām is a sun letter: in اللَّيْل (al-layl, the night) the two l sounds become one doubled l.

How sun and moon letters are written

The spelling of al- never changes: ال is written before every noun, sun or moon. Fully vowelled text shows the difference with two marks. A sun letter gets a shadda, the doubling mark, as in الشَّمْس. Before a moon letter the l gets a sukūn, the no-vowel mark, as in الْقَمَر. Both conventions are described in the same Wikipedia article.

Most printed Arabic leaves both marks out, so the reader has to know the split. Our page on Arabic diacritics covers the shadda and the sukūn and which texts print them. In Latin letters we write the article as it is said (ash-shams). Library-style romanization writes al- every time (al-shams), as our guide to Arabic transliteration explains, so expect both spellings.

When the a of al- disappears

The a of al- is only said at the start of speech. The article's alif is a hamzat al-waṣl, a "joining" hamza, and Wikipedia's article on al- notes that it drops after a vowel. So وَالشَّمْس (and the sun) is wa-sh-shams, and وَالْقَمَر (and the moon) is wa-l-qamar. The checker shows this joined form too.

Some nouns start with a joining hamza of their own, such as اِسْم (ism, name). There the l takes a kasra instead of a sukūn: الِاسْم, al-ism, as in the Wiktionary entry for اسم.

Jīm and the spoken dialects

In Modern Standard Arabic ج (jīm) is a moon letter: الْجَمَل is al-jamal, the camel. That is how our alphabet chart classes it. Spoken Arabic does not all agree: the Wikipedia article on sun and moon letters records that in some Moroccan, Mesopotamian and Palestinian Arabic, where jīm is often said like the s in "measure", it assimilates like a sun letter: ij-jamal. Write and say al-jamal in MSA, and expect ij-jamal from some speakers.

The dialects keep the rest of the rule. As our map of Arabic grammar shows, Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf Arabic say the article as il-, so the sun is ish-shams and the door is il-bāb.

Common mistakes with al-

These three spellings of the article are wrong. If you type the article yourself, the checker flags the first two.

• A sukūn on the l before a sun letter: الْشَمْس asks you to say al-shams. The l takes no mark and the sun letter takes the shadda: الشَّمْس.
• A shadda on a moon letter: القَّمَر would double the q. Moon letters are never doubled by the article.
• Leaving the l out: ash-shams is still spelled الشمس, with the l. Only the sound changes.

Our step-by-step guide to reading Arabic script in six steps puts the article in order with the rest of the script, and the letter-recognition quiz checks you know all 28 letters before you sort them.

Frequently asked questions

What are the 14 moon letters?

ا ب ج ح خ ع غ ف ق ك م ه و ي: alif (carrying a hamza), bāʾ, jīm, ḥāʾ, khāʾ, ʿayn, ghayn, fāʾ, qāf, kāf, mīm, hāʾ, wāw and yāʾ. Before any of them the l of al- is pronounced, as in al-qamar (the moon) and al-bayt (the house). In fully vowelled text the l carries a sukūn: الْقَمَر.

What are the 14 sun letters?

ت ث د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ل ن: tāʾ, thāʾ, dāl, dhāl, rāʾ, zāy, sīn, shīn, ṣād, ḍād, ṭāʾ, ẓāʾ, lām and nūn. Before any of them the l of al- is silent and the letter is said twice, as in ash-shams (the sun) and an-nūr (the light). In fully vowelled text the doubled letter carries a shadda: الشَّمْس.

What letter is س?

س is sīn, the Arabic s, said like the s in see. It is the 12th letter in the usual order and a sun letter, so the l of the article goes silent before it and the s doubles: السَّمَاء is as-samāʾ, the sky.

What is the letter ه?

ه is hāʾ, a plain English h, pronounced wherever it appears in a word, including at the end. It is a moon letter, so the article keeps its l: الْهِلَال is al-hilāl, the crescent moon. Do not confuse it with ة, tāʾ marbūṭa, which looks like a final ه with two dots and ends many feminine words.

How do you say ي?

ي is yāʾ. At the start of a syllable it is the y of yes, as in يَوْم (yawm, day). After a kasra it makes the long vowel ī, as in فِيل (fīl, elephant), and after a fatha with a sukūn on it, the sound ay, as in بَيْت (bayt, house). It is a moon letter: الْيَوْم is al-yawm, the day.

Keep learning Arabic

• Arabic Grammar Basics: How the Rules Fit TogetherArabic grammar rules on one map: three word classes, two sentence types, each rule with an example, and which rules still matter in spoken dialects.
• Arabic Harakat and Tashkeel: Every Mark on One LetterEvery Arabic diacritic on one letter: fatha, kasra, damma, sukun, shadda and the three tanwin, plus which real texts print harakat and which never do.
• Arabic Grammar BooksView our list of Arabic Grammar books used to help you learn the fundamentals of Arabic.
• Libyan Arabic ResourcesLibyan Arabic, east against west: Benghazi and Tripoli speech in one table, the n- prefix that makes it Maghrebi, and the few books that actually exist.