Keith Massey

Keith Massey, PhD, studied biblical Hebrew and Arabic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After 9/11, he worked as an Arabic linguist for the National Security Agency. He now teaches Latin in New Jersey.

Articles & Books From Keith Massey

Arabic Character Writing For Dummies
Learn to write in Arabic In Arabic, there are different levels of language. The written language, which is studied in this book, is literary Arabic, sometimes also called classical Arabic or even modern or standard Arabic. It is the language of the Quran, classical poetry, literature and the media. The Arabic plume consists of 28 consonants and three long vowels.
Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-08-2022
If you want to become a more fluent speaker and writer of Arabic, you need to understand the Arabic alphabet, which orders the letters differently from the languages you may be used to. Knowing how to form both past tense verbs and present tense verbs goes a long way in helping you grasp the nuances of the Arabic language.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
The following tables show the Arabic alphabet and their English transliteration characters. The consonants are in the traditional order of the Arabic alphabet, which you need to know in order to look things up in an Arabic-English dictionary. In parentheses after the translation, you can find out whether the consonant is a Sun Letter (SL) or a Moon Letter (ML).
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
In Arabic, the past tense is produced with a system of suffixes. You use the same suffixes regardless of which of the ten verb forms you're using. Here's a table showing the past tense of typical Form I verb so you can spot the suffixes in a pinch.
Article / Updated 03-26-2016
In Arabic, the system of prefixes and suffixes that make up the present tense are the same in all of the ten verb forms. You use these all the time. Remember that you can form the future tense just by adding the prefix sa- to the beginning of those verbs. The following table shows the present tense of the verb shariba (to drink).