Introducing Prayer Pronunciation

When you’re new to salah, or haven’t yet memorised every part of it, it helps to have the words in front of you. Prayer Pronunciation is a small website for that. It shows the words of the prayer in transliteration, which means Arabic written in English letters, and lays them out so you can read them from a phone placed in front of you while you pray.

It’s mainly for new Muslims and for anyone who doesn’t read Arabic yet. It’s also for people who know most of the prayer well but would like a gentle prompt for certain parts, and partly I made it for myself. I used to keep handwritten notes on paper, but at Isha, or when praying Witr or Tahajjud in the dark, I found them hard to see. A phone screen can be read without switching a light on, and it’s easier to carry around than a notebook.

How it’s laid out

You start by choosing the prayer you’re about to pray: Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha or Witr. That sets the number of rak’ahs, and the page lays out the whole prayer in order, one rak’ah at a time, through to the final sitting.

Each part can be opened or closed. If you only need help with the tashahhud and the durood, you can close everything else, and the page will remember that the next time you open the same prayer. Ruku and sujud are clearly marked, along with the takbir said as you move into them, so when you glance down your eye can find its place instead of searching through a block of text.

The words follow the Hanafi method, which is the one most commonly taught in UK mosques, and the page says so. Other schools differ on some details, and those differences are valid. By default Surah al-Kawthar is recited after al-Fatiha in the first rak’ah and Surah al-Ikhlas in the second, as both are short and commonly used. A short guide on the page explains the marks used in the transliteration, such as a line over a vowel meaning it is held long.

Not needing to touch the phone

The main thing I wanted was that you shouldn’t need to touch the phone once you’ve started praying. I thought about ways of moving through the prayer hands-free, like voice, motion or timers, but none of them was reliable enough, and some would have been more of a distraction than a help. So the idea is that you set it up before you begin, and then only glance at it.

Two small technical pieces make that possible.

The first is that the text sizes itself to fit the screen. Whatever sections you have open, the page tries a text size, checks whether everything fits without scrolling, and then tries larger or smaller, halving the difference each time. After fourteen quick tries it settles on the largest size that fits. It all happens in a fraction of a second, and it runs again whenever you open or close a section or turn the phone. If everything is open and it genuinely can’t fit, it lets the page scroll rather than shrink the words too small to read.

The second is keeping the screen on. Phones normally dim and lock after a short while, which is the last thing you want halfway through a prayer. On phones and browsers that support it, the site uses the Wake Lock API to ask the phone to stay awake while a prayer is open, and asks again if you switch away and come back. You can turn this off in the settings.

The whole site is a single small file with a dark theme, so it’s easy to read in a dark room without being harsh on the eyes. Your choices are saved on your phone and nowhere else, and there’s nothing to sign up for.

A gentle note

Transliteration is a help, not a replacement for learning. English letters can’t capture every Arabic sound, and the best way to learn the words properly is to recite them to someone who knows them well, such as the imam at your local mosque or a Qur’an teacher. I’d think of this site as something to lean on while you’re learning, and hopefully need a little less over time.

Prayer Pronunciation is free at prayerpronunciation.com. I hope it makes things a little easier for someone. May Allah accept our prayers and our good deeds.