The 5 Most Common Tajweed Mistakes

When I first started my tajweed journey I had no idea I was making so many mistakes. And on top of that not knowing the rules meant I was making major mistakes that would change the meaning of the sentence. May Allah SWT forgive us for the mistakes we make knowingly and unknowingly, ameen.

Through my journey of discovering the Quran again with tajweed and teaching tajweed to others, I often see some common mistakes. Here are 5 common mistakes I have noticed and a small tip of you can rectify them.

1. Addition or omission of a long vowel (madd letter - alif madd, wow madd and ya madd)

I have to admit this was my biggest mistake and it has taken a lot of effort to rectify it. Adding a long vowel and omitting it can change the word and the meaning drastically. So what can you do to correct it? The first thing is to familiarise yourself with the short vowels and the long vowels (you can see a step-by-step explanation in the blog post called Madd Letters). The short vowels have one count and the long vowels are two counts. Once you know how to find the long vowels, every time you come across them in the Quran get your fingers ready and open two of your fingers to make sure you are elongating it for two counts. This really helped me and I still do it sometimes for the longer madds.

2. Not pronouncing the letters correctly

Some of the Arabic letters can be very tricky as they are not found in any other language. But that is not a problem as practice makes perfect. A great place to start is by watching the YouTube series by Wisam Sharieff on the Arabic letters. Watch the videos, listen and try pronouncing the letters in front of a mirror (an excellent tip I got from @arabnicles). To internalise the makharij of the letters why not play our 5 main makharij game. Once you have practiced them a few times try and find a friend or a teacher who can listen to you and point you in the right direction if you are still making mistakes.

3. Not making a letter heavy where appropriate

Do you know which letters are heavy? Once you familiarise yourself with the heavy letters you can start practicing making them heavy. There was a time when I had no idea there were heavy and light letters, so I would read all the letters lightly. The letters are made heavy by raising the back of the tongue. Check out @alqasaslearning highlights for heavy letters to start practicing making letters heavy.

4. Doing qalqalah on letters which do not have this quality

Most of the time this occurs with certain letters with sukoon. But this mistake is easy to fix. Qalqalah happens when you let go of the articulation point of the letter quickly. Let me give you an example, the letter lam is pronounced when the tongue tip of the tongue and the front edge of the tongue touches the gum. What I would do when reading lam with a sukoon is I would touch the gum and let go quickly which would mean qalqalah would take place (bouncing of the letter). So to avoid this I slowly learnt that I had the keep my tongue touched to the gum until I pronounced the next letter. This is with all the letters that do not have the quality of qalqalah, make sure not to let go until you are ready to pronounce the next letter.

5. Taking a breath whilst reading

Holding your breath for a long time can be very hard sometimes. So what ends up happening is that you just take a quick breath and continue reading. This is not the correct way to stop. If you are running out of breath apply the waqf rules (stopping rules) before you continue. Sometimes I have to stop pretty quickly to take a break and that is okay as long as you apply the rules. In the beginning, it is good to try and stop at every waqf sign you can see. Over time you will be able to recite longer ayahs without taking a break.

Do you have any other tips which you think could be helpful? Do let me know in the comments below.