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Asalamulaiakum ya aki
Sun and moon letters, meaning masculine and feminine? How does one know what is sun and moon?

Alsalamo 3alekom ya Ehab wa M7amd !
Thank you guys a lot for this great job (in teaching arabic to the world ) you guys are doing!
It's really great masha2Allah.

I've got the same question (as the user above asked) how do we know which are the sun letters and which are the moon ones?

There's an article about sun and moon letters in the English version of Wikipedia.

Thanks Desmond for the wiki info, I'll put some notes on these letters here for everyone's convenience.

There are 14 sun letters حروف شمسية which are:
ﻥ ,ﻝ ,ﻅ ,ﻁ ,ﺽ ,ﺹ ,ﺵ ,ﺱ ,ﺯ ,ﺭ ,ﺫ ,ﺩ ,ﺙ ,ﺕ

And 14 moon letters حروف قمرية:
ه ,ﻱ ,ﻭ ,ﻡ ,ﻙ ,ﻕ ,ﻑ ,ﻍ ,ﻉ ,ﺥ ,ﺡ ,ﺝ ,ﺏ ,ء

If a word starting with a sun letter is preceded by ال ‘al’, then the second letter in ‘al’ which makes the L sound is not pronounced, instead the sun letter is stressed. Perhaps the following example will help:

شمس means sun and is pronounced ‘shams’. If you define it by adding ال -> الشمس the pronunciation will sound like ‘ash-shams’ as opposed to ‘alshams’.

With moon letters, you basically pronounce the L of the definite article ‘al’. For example:

قلم means pen and is pronounced ‘qalam’. If you define it القلم the pronunciation is ‘alqalam’ and not ‘aq-qalam’ since ق is a moon letter

Hope this is clear

wow

Thanks for the wonderful lesson.
شكرا جريلا