The Diacritics in Arabic are unignorable for a proper pronunciation of words. Unlike English where there are 5 vowels and the rest are called consonants, Arabic looks at the matter differently. In Arabic, the letter is vowel if it has one of the following diacritics: Fat7a ـَـ, Kasra ـِـ and 9'amme ـُـ.
-Fat7a فَتْحَة opens the sound (Takes it up, like a short ا) e.x. فَهد Fahid (فَـ Fa) Leopard.
-Kasra كَسْرَة breaks the sound (Takes it down, like a short ي) e.x. هِجرة Hijra (هِـ Hi) Immigration.
-9'amme ضَمّة gives the letter the sound of a short و, e.x. بكتُب Biktob (ـتُـ to) I write.
The letter is consonant if it has the Sukoon ـْـ. The Sukoon, according to it's name, tranquilize the letter. The following are examples for each letter in examples above, but this time with Sukoon:
1st مفْتاح Miftaa7 (ـفْـ f) a key
2nd مهْلة Mihle (ـهْـ h) Dead line
3rd بتْرا Batra (ـتْـ t) Petra
In Fus7a there's the diacritic of Tanween (giving the sound of noon ن) and it's only added to the end of the word adding the noon ن to the last sound. Tanween is just a double Fat7a, Kasra or 9'amme (ـًـــٍـــٌـ). In Levantine we use only the Tanween of Fat7a ـًـ and that's just with few words, e.x.
Shukran شكراً (an اً)
2ahlan أهلاً (an اً)
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