1st Letter: 'elif

Welcome to the 1st dreamscape.  Can you find the 5 symbols in the picture?

1) The tree tells us it's the first letter of the alphabet.

2) The shape of the palm tree with only two palm fronds left on top gives us the shape of the letter 'elif with the hamza on top.  This is a dynamic picture, meaning it incorporates a narrative of change.  Imagine the elephant eating all of the palm fronds off the top of the trunk of the tree to make the 'elif stand alone sometimes without the hamza.  This always happens to the 'elif when it is in a syllable with another consonant.  When 'elif is alone without the hamza (represented with a straight apostrophe '), then the 'elif acts as a long vowel.  Otherwise, the hamza is the glottal stop we use rarely in U.S. English in words "Latin."  The funny pronunciation of the "t" in middle of "Latin" is a glottal stop.  That's the hamza.  It does lots of funny things in Arabic, but mostly it just hangs out on top of long vowels (a, w, & y) that don't have another consonant to make a syllable with.  The rule in Arabic is that no vowel can be spoken without a consonant in the same syllable, so hamza fills that role when no other consonant steps up to the plate.  Think of it as the back up consonant. 

3) The sound of 'elif is "e" like the first sound in elephant.  The "lif" part of the name is like the "lif" in the word "lift."  

4) The elephant in not solid black and there are no solid black characters in this image, so by default we assume that this letter is Light.  Therefore vowels that follow the 'elif-hamza pair will take the light pronunciation.

5)  Imagine this scene is in a zoo.  The elephant is sneakily ripping up this palm tree at night for a midnight snack because the zoo keeper wouldn't let him rip up the landscaping during the day.  Since this is a night time moon letter it doesn't reflect itself onto preceding "L" sounds.  Preceding "L" sounds are therefor pronounced simply as "L."

AS A WORD

'elif and hamza are also a word all by themselves.  They are used as a particle at the beginning of yes/no and either/or questions.  We would use an 'elif-hamza to ask the question, "Do you like to eat palm fronds Mr. Elephant?"  We would also use and 'elif-hamza to ask, "Would you like coffee or water to drink with your palm fronds, Mr. Elephant?"  It's somewhat like using the word "hey," in front of a question in English.  "Hey, do you like palm fronds?"  However, in Arabic prefacing questions with this particle is more like saying "don't you?" at the end in English because it denotes that the question is rhetorical--meaning the person asking the question is implying that they know the answer.  They are simply asking for confirmation.  So it's like saying "You like palm fronds Mr. Elephant, don't you?"  Or, "Don't you want coffee or water with your palm fronds Mr. Elephant?"  Just remember it always goes in the beginning of a question in Arabic like "hey...".  It means "don't you," but it doesn't flip around from the beginning to the end of different kinds of questions like in English.  To remember all of this, I imagine myself in this daydream picture running up to the elephant and shouting, "Hey, don't you want coffee or water to wash all those palm fronds down Mr. Elephant?!?"  "Follow me then!" I shout, and then I run down the field while the elephant chases me swinging the tree trunk.