What are Maddah Letters?
There are three letters of Maddah, they are Alif ا , Waaw و and Yaa ي.
- When there is a Fathah before an Alif, it becomes ‘Alif Maddah’. When there is a Kasrah before a Yaa it becomes ‘Yaa Maddah’. And when there is a dammah before waaw, it becomes waaw maddah.
- The maddah letters are pronounced by stretching them up to one Alif or two harakaat (short vowel letters).
- As as far speech is concerned, they are simply prolongation of short vowels, so they are called Harakaat Taweelah حَرَكَات طَوِيلَة ‘long vowels.’ Usually their meaning is related to the short vowels and is not a complete new different meaning word. For example, qatala means to kill, qaatala means to fight with each other.
- Spell it out as follows: ب alif zabar baa, ب yaa zer bee, ب waaw paish boo.
