Which marks count as short vowels?

Fatḥa, kasra, and ḍamma (the three harakat) each count as one short vowel. Sukūn marks the absence of a vowel and is not counted. Tanwīn (the nunation marks) are counted as a short vowel plus an /n/, so each tanwīn adds one to the short count.

Which letters count as long vowels?

The matres lectionis ا (alif), و (wāw), and ي (yāʾ) count as long vowels when they extend a preceding short vowel. The tool counts each occurrence of these letters as a long vowel for a broad metrics estimate.

Why does my text show zero short vowels?

Short vowels are only counted from explicit harakat. If your text is unvowelled (no diacritics), no short vowels can be detected. Add fatḥa, kasra, and ḍamma marks for an accurate ratio.

How is the ratio expressed?

The tool gives short:long as a reduced fraction where possible, plus each as a percentage of total vowels. A higher proportion of long vowels generally signals heavier, slower-moving prosody.

What is the Arabic Short/Long Vowel Ratio?

Count short vowel marks (harakat) versus long vowel letters (ا و ي) in vowelled Arabic text and compute their ratio and percentages — a prosody and metrics aid for poetry and phonetics, run entirely in your browser. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Arabic Short/Long Vowel Ratio

Name: Arabic Short/Long Vowel Ratio
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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The Arabic short/long vowel ratio measures the balance between short vowels (written as diacritics) and long vowels (written as the letters ا و ي) in a passage. It is a useful descriptive statistic for Arabic prosody (ʿarūḍ), phonetics teaching, and comparing the rhythmic weight of texts.

Arabic vowel length and why it matters

In Arabic, vowel length is phonemic — it distinguishes meaning. The pairs qatala (he killed) and qātala (he fought) differ only in the length of the first vowel after the initial consonant. The distinction is obligatory and cannot be neutralised.

Long vowels in Arabic are written as letters (ا و ي serving as matres lectionis after short vowels) while short vowels in Modern Standard Arabic are written as harakat diacritics. In most running text the harakat are omitted, but this tool requires vowelled text because short vowels are not visible otherwise.

Prosodic weight and metre (ʿarūḍ)

Classical Arabic poetry is quantitative metre — rhythm is built from patterns of light (short, CV) and heavy (long, CVV or CVC) syllables, not word stress as in English. A syllable is heavy if it contains a long vowel or ends in a consonant after a short vowel. The ratio of short to long vowels in a passage is therefore a rough proxy for its syllabic weight distribution.

Heavy metres (those with many long syllables) tend to feel solemn or majestic — they are common in odes (qaṣīda) and elegies. Lighter metres with more short syllables tend to feel faster and are common in folk and popular song. This tool gives a quick descriptive count rather than full metrical scansion, but the ratio is useful for comparing passages or gauging the relative weight of two texts.

How it works

The tool scans the text character by character. Short vowels are counted from the harakat code points; long vowels are counted from the mater lectionis letters:

short vowels:  َ (fatḥa)  ِ (kasra)  ُ (ḍamma)        → +1 each
tanwīn:        ً ٍ ٌ                                   → +1 short each
not counted:   ْ (sukūn)  ّ (shadda, a length marker, not a vowel)
long vowels:   ا (alif)   و (wāw)   ي (yāʾ)            → +1 each

The ratio is short ÷ long, also expressed as a reduced fraction and as percentages of the combined vowel total.

Worked example

In كِتَابٌ (kitābun, “a book”), the marks give:

kasra (ِ) under kāf → 1 short vowel
fatḥa (َ) under tāʾ → 1 short vowel
ḍammatan (ٌ) on bāʾ → 1 short vowel (tanwīn counts as short)
alif (ا) between tāʾ and bāʾ → 1 long vowel

Result: 3 short : 1 long, ratio 3:1, or 75% short / 25% long.

Because long vowels are counted from letters and short vowels from diacritics, unvowelled text will undercount short vowels significantly — always supply fully vowelled (mashkūl) text for a meaningful ratio. The و and ي letters also serve as consonants in certain positions, so treat the long-vowel count as a metrics-oriented estimate rather than a strict phonemic tally.