51 © Language Mentors International, 2023 Note: It is important to remember which horuf do not connect to the horuf that follow them. There are seven such non-connectors: alĕf, all members of the dāl and re group, and wāw. To help remember the non-connectors, you can use the word اردو ,which contains all the principal nonconnectors, and means army in Dari. اردو ا د ر و ذ ز ژ
52 © Language Mentors International, 2023 Note: Remember, the Dari alphabet requires the use of alĕf before all vowel sounds at the beginning of the word. This is because the vowel sounds represented by harakāt must always be placed above or below a harf, and the default harf at the beginning of a word is alĕf. Also, the horuf wāw and yā always make the consonant sounds w and y at the beginning of the word, so again alĕf is used to indicate that these horuf are to be pronounced as vowels. example transliteration translation phonetic description harakāt اسب َسب) (ا asb horse alĕf + zabar (◌َ ) انکار ِنکار) (ا ĕnkār reject alĕf + zĕr (◌ِ ) استاد ُستاد) (ا ostād teacher alĕf + peš (◌ُ ) horuf* u او he/she (colloq.) alĕf + wāw ( و( in ای ن this/these alĕf + yā (ی ( ٓب āb ا water alĕf mad (ٓ (ا [alĕf + mad (◌ٓ )] *Word-initial ō and e are very rare in Dari, but are written the same way as u and i
53 © Language Mentors International, 2023 __end__ Note: Dari also has several diphthongs, which occur when a vowel sound is directly followed by a semivowel. A semivowel is a sound that has some qualities of a consonant and some qualities of a vowel. In English, the last two letters in the words show and day represent diphthongs composed of vowel sounds followed by the semivowel sounds w and y. These same semivowels exist in Dari, and are represented by و and ی—the only two horuf that are used to represent both vowel sounds and consonant sounds. Because the harakāt used to represent vowel sounds are almost never written, diphthongs are usually identical to other vowels and their occurrence must be memorized. example transliteration translation description aw diphthong business sawdā سو دا ( َسو دا) sud سو د سود interest, profit vowel u ay diphthong flag bayraq ب ی رق (َبی رق ) بیکار یکار ب bekār useless, unemployed vowel e When diphthongs occur at the beginning of a word, they require the use of alĕf as a default harf for the harakat that represents the first vowel sound. In this case, because harakāt are almost never used, the diphthong and vowel are again indistinguishable in writing: َو سط) awsat او سط (ا middle, average diphthong aw ōbāmā او باما Obama vowel ō