Anybody who has seen Arabic writing will know that it looks completely different from western writing, which is based on the Roman alphabet. Arabic has its own alphabet and a grammar which is very different from most western languages (the Romance languages). Arabic differs from the Romance* languages in a number of major aspects:

To begin, Arabic - written by hand, printed or typed - is always cursive - that is, the letters are (for the most part) joined to each other. The bits which join the letters are called ligatures and effectively form part of the letter. Arabic has no equivalent of the separate letters used in Western writing, such as you are reading now. It also has no capital letters. Punctuation in Arabic is now much the same as in western languages.

The next major difference is that Arabic is written from right to left. Consequently, books and magazines have page 1 where westerners would expect to find the back page. An exception to this is Arabic numerals which are written left to right (European numerals are largely derived from the Arabic symbols).

indefinite article so that, for example, the arabic word for 'door' actually means 'a door'.

'green' actually translates as 'a green one'. So, if we place the two Arabic words meaning

'door' and 'green' together, the literal translation is:

Indefinite noun indefinite adjective

a door a green one

Note also the order - the noun must precede the adjective.

*(e.g. French and Spanish. English is not a Romance language although a large part of it is derived from them. There are many English words which have come from French, Spanish, Italian and German. A great many come from Scandinavian languages and some come from various Indian languages, Russian, Chinese - and Arabic!)

In Arabic, there are only two tenses :

To indicate the future, a prefix is added to the p