1) The voting booth in this picture tells us that this dreamscape depicts the 18th letter of the Arabic alphabet because one can start voting when one turns 18 years old.
2) The reflection of the spot lights off of the owl's round belly and face give us the shape of this letter.
3) The sound of this letter is very remote from anything we use in English. Owls are known for coughing up lots of hair balls (called owl pellets). One has to cough up this sound as well. Some textbooks describe the throat muscles used in making this sound like the muscles used in vomiting. We will transcribe this letter using a backwards dash ` -- it's sort of like a vocalized version of the hamza, our glottal stop.
4) The owl is Black, so this is a Dark letter. Since hamza (with 'elif) is Light, pay attention to whether the vowel after one of these sounds is pronounced in the Light or Dark form (eh vs. aw, for example), and then you will be able to tell them apart. I've know students to frequently mix these sounds up on tests because they are both so alien to English speaker, but the vowels that follow these letters are predictable and easy to discern. Pay attention to those larger patterns of pairing and you'll be fine.
5) The scene in this image is a night--owls only come out at night, so it has to be at night, right? That tells us this is a Lunar (Moon) letter. Thank goodness, that means we don't have to double the vomiting sound in words. Wouldn't you rather pronounce the "L" sound?
AS A WORD
`uwae' (like a wholf howling and then saying "wet" with the "t" sound in Latin), a noun, means:
I. howling, yelping, yowling
This is a great word to help us try to learn to pronounce this letter. Think of a wolf howling and try to imitate that. That is much more fun than trying to make a vomiting sound. For practice with this sound we recommend the funny Saudi video. Saudi is spelled with this sound. Think of the teacher howling like a wolf in the middle of the word and it will be much easier to understand and internalize. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE9_Nf4KHIc
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