تلا
Talā
To recite the Quran; the verbal noun is tilawah
What it means
Talā means to recite the Quran, and its verbal noun is tilāwah. The root also carries the sense of following, since the reciter follows the words of the text one after another. The Quran speaks of those who recite the Book as it should be recited (2:121) and commands the believer to recite what has been revealed of the Book (29:45). In practice tilāwah means reciting aloud or quietly with attention to the words and their sound, at prayer and in private devotion. The manner of reciting is set out in the rules of tajwīd, and a person who recites is called a tālī or, more often, a qāriʾ.
Often misunderstood as
That it can be rendered simply as “read”, which loses the sense of devotional recitation and of following the text.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 26, listed as TALĀ. The definition is restated here.