Arabic Possessive Adjective 22. Lesson

Arabic Possessive Adjective 22. Lesson

 

 

Arabic Possessive Adjective 22. Lesson

 

Arabic uses pronoun suffixes as another way to indicate possession. In English we say “my house,” “his house,” etc., to indicate that something belongs to someone. In Arabic the same thing is done but the possessive pronouns are suffixed to the noun instead of written as independent words before the noun. Below is a chart of the possessive pronoun suffixes along with their corresponding independent pronouns.

Possessive pronouns in standard and Egyptian Arabic

 

Possessive pronouns (my, your, his, her, our, their) are used to indicate ownership of something. In Arabic, as with object pronouns, these take the form of suffixes; they are attached to the noun that’s owned.

 

Note: If the noun that’s owned ends in a taa’ marbuuTa (ـة), the taa’ marbuuTa must be “untied” and made into a ت before the pronoun suffix is added:

 

The object and possessive pronoun suffixes are exactly the same except for the first person singular.

Possessive pronouns in standard and Egyptian Arabic:

 

	English	Standard Arabic	Egyptian Arabic
Singular	my	ـي (-i)
	your (masc.)	ـكَ (-ka)	ـك (-ak)
	your (fem.)	ـكِ (-ki)	ـك (-ik)
	his	ـه (-u)
	her	ـها (-ha)
Dual	our	ـنا (-na)
	your	ـكما (-kuma)
	their	ـهما (-huma)
Plural	our	ـنا (-na)
	your (masc.)	ـكم (-kum)	ـكو\ـكم (-ku/-kum)
	your (fem.)	ـكن (-kunna)
	their (masc.)	ـهم (-hum)	ـهم (-hom)
	their (fem.)	ـهن (-hunna)

 

Note: In standard Arabic, if the noun that’s owned is dual (ends in ـان -aan or ـين -ein), or if the noun has a sound masculine plural suffix (ـون -uun or ـين -iin), you need to drop the final ـن before adding the pronoun suffix.

 

Note: In Egyptian Arabic, if a noun, verb, or preposition ends in a vowel that is not a taa’ marbuuTa, some of the pronoun suffixes you’ll need to use with it will change. For object/possessive pronouns:

 

Also, the final vowel in the noun/verb/whatever will need to be lengthened. Some examples:

 

Note: In colloquial Arabic, when used with possessive suffixes, the words أب (ab), “father,” and أخ (ax), “brother,” take the form أبو(abu) and أخو (axu). Again, the final -u vowel is lengthened before the suffix is added.

 

Note: Usually, you do not use possessive pronoun suffixes with dual nouns in Egyptian Arabic. Instead, you say “il-[noun]ein bituu3[possessive pronoun suffix].”

 

There are, however, a few exceptions: