How to read these verses in the Quran?

Question

Assalamu alaikum. I am learning how to read Arrabic alphabets and how to read Quran. I'm slightly confused with something:

In the first verse of Sura Al-Faatiha, the spelling suggests the following reading

Bismi Allahi alrahmani alraheemi.

But the actual reading that I heard from many recitations are like

Bismi-lla(h)i-lrahmani-raheem.

So the 'al' was connected really fast, almost indistinguishable to my ear. And the 'i' in the end of 'alraheemi' was omitted.

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My second example is the third verse of Al-Faatiha, which looks to me like

Maliki yawmi aldiyni

But in the recitations it was like

Maliki yawmi-diyn

So again 'al' was connected really fast and 'i' in the end was omitted.

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Please help me understand the correct way to read the suras (I guess the word is tajweed), or point me toward some references. Thank you very much.

Answer 1

The first letter of the Arabic "al-" ("ال") prefix is known as a hamzat al-wasl. This can be written either as an alif with a waslah above it "ٱ", or just as an alif by itself "ا" (e.g. with no hamzah).

While a regular alif (with a hamza) will always be pronounced with its own vowel as a glottal stop, a hamzat al-wasl is silent when it is preceded by a vowel (and if it's preceded by the prefix "li-" ("ل"), the hamzat al-wasl is dropped entirely; such is the case for "لله" in Al-Fatihah 2). If, however, it's at the beginning of speech you would pronounce it as a regular alif.

That's why you will typically hear (and recite) "Al-" in full at the beginning of, for example, Al-Fatihah 2 & 3, but only hear (and recite) "-l-" elsewhere.

This is not limited to the "al-" prefix; another example of the hamzat al-wasl would be the first letter of "اهدنا" in Al-Fatihah 6 (but since it's at the beginning of an ayah you'd probably be pronouncing it anyway).

As for the final vowels, they're just not pronounced at the end of speech; it is common practice to stop between each ayah, so the final vowels would normally be ignored. If, however, one chose to recite multiple ayat together as a single recitation, these final vowels would be pronounced (and possibly absorbed into subsequent hamzat al-wasl)

So, using Al-Fatihah 2-3 as an example:

Ayat recited separately
² Alhamdu li-llahi rabbi-l'alamin
³ Alrahmani-lrahim

Ayat recited together
² Alhamdu li-llahi rabbi-l'alamina ³ -lrahmani-lrahim

Answer 2

tajweed is a great knowledge . for example al in te bismi allahi al rahman dont pronounciate because it is hamzatul Wasl in arabik or a part of quran(men ma razaqnahom yonfequn)men ma pronunciate memma and the name of this grammer is idqam.

Answer 3

Read Quran with Tajweed is essential, as without tajweed one may not be able to pronounce the words correctly which may lead to pronouncing them incorrect and in some scenarios even change the meaning of phrase. I found this Quran with Tajweed really helpful with their Color Code Tajweed Rules helping how to read Al Quran.

Answer 4

'alif' and 'laam' are silent here. In Tajweed rules, if 'alif' and 'laam' come before 'tashdeed', they both will become silent. See my website for more details.

My suggestion would be to do Quran Learning with a live Quran teacher so that you can understand all Tajweed rules.