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Basic grammar

There are two genders in Arabic, masculine (m.) and feminine (f.). This applies to verbs, nouns and adjectives.

Verbs

There are two different types of verb in Arabic, depending on their tense/mood: perfective (action complete) and imperfective (action incomplete). Verbs are marked for person, number and gender.

In Arabic first, second and third persons are marked differently in the verb form, e.g. anna adresu ‘I study,’anta tadresu ‘you study,’huwas yadresu ‘he studies.’

Verbs inherently exhibit gender marking in both perfective (past) and imperfective (present) forms. In the perfective form masculine gender is unmarked, whereas feminine gender is shown by a final t sound, e.g. ’al-waladu ’akala ‘the boy ate’ compared with ’al-bintu ’akalat ‘the girl ate’. In the imperfective form gender is shown by means of prefixes using the t and y sounds to indicate respectively masculine and feminine genders, e.g. ’al-waladu ya’kulu ‘the boy eats/is eating’ compared with ’albintu ta’kulu ‘the girl eats/is eating.’

Nouns

There are two types of noun in Arabic. One is known as regular, where the feminine form can be derived from the masculine form, for example:

	Masculine	Feminine
‘Student’	taalib	taalibat
‘Teacher’	mudarris	mudarrisat
‘Driver’	saa’iq	saa’iqat

The other class of nouns is irregular, where the masculine and feminine forms do not share the same root and cannot be derived from one another. These should be learned gradually as individual items of vocabulary. Examples of this type of noun are walad ‘boy,’bint ‘girl’; imra’at ‘woman’, rajul ‘man.’

Note that even non-human nouns are obligatorily marked for gender, e.g. daar (f.) ‘house,’madiinat (f.) ‘city,’balad (m.) ‘country,’qalam (m.) ‘pen.’

Arabic differentiates between singular, dual and plural numbers, although the dual form is not used frequently. The dual and the regular plural can be derived from the singular form as shown below:

	Root	Singular	Dual	Plural
‘Player’	l-’-b	laa’ib	laa’ibaan	laa’ibuun
‘Teacher’	d-r-s	mudarris	mudarrisaan	mudarrisuun
‘Spectator’	f-r-j	mutafarrij	mutafarrijaan	mutafarrijuun

The above examples relate to the masculine gender only. Feminine derived nouns take the suffix – at in the singular form and replace the masculine plural suffix – uun with the feminine plural suffix – aat; for example mudarrisat ‘female teacher’ becomes mudarrisaat ‘female teachers.’ The feminine dual form is similar to the masculine form withthe exception of the feminine marker – at being inserted before the dual suffix, e.g. mudarrisataan ‘two female teachers.’

Definiteness in Arabic is marked in general by means of the article al- attached at the beginning of the noun, e.g. walad ‘a boy,’al-walad ‘the boy.’ However, with a number of consonants, known as the solar consonants, a sound harmony rule means that the final sound of the article is assimilated to the first consonant of the noun, e.g. sayyaarat ‘a car,’as-sayyaarat ‘the car.’ The consonants to which this applies are d, dh, d, t, t, th, s, sh, s, z, z, n, l and r.

‘Case’ refers to the grammatical function assigned to the noun. In Arabic there are three essential case markings—nominative (when the noun is the subject of the sentence), accusative (when the noun is the object of the sentence) and genitive (when the noun is the object of a preposition). Case marking is shown differently depending on the definite or indefinite status of the noun, as shown below for the noun walad ‘boy’:

	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive
Definite	al-waladu	al-walada	al-waladi
Indefinite	waladun	waladan	waladin

Adjectives

Adjectives tend to go after the noun to which they refer. They must agree with the noun they accompany in gender (masculine or feminine), number (singular, dual or plural) and case (nominative, accusative or genitive), e.g. al-waladu an-najiibu najaha ‘the studious boy passed (the exam)’; qaabaltu al-walada an-najiiba ‘I met the studious boy.’

Possessive adjectives

Possessive adjectives agree in gender and number with the noun to which they relate (the owner), as in English. They cannot be used in conjunction with the definite article. The following examples using the word kitaab ‘book’ illustrate the way possessives are marked in Arabic.