Learn Arabic in Hundred Step- Arabic Grammar
Arabic How many
48.When it means“how many,” کَم has to be followed by an indefinite noun, in the accusative case. Unlike English, it has to be singular. Arab grammarians call it a particle of “The Accusative of Distinction,” or تَمييز.
How many students are there in the class? کم طالِباً في الصفِّ؟
Arabic Numbers
49. Numbers that proceed nouns should take the opposite gender
of those nouns. Furthermore, they should carry the marker that is determined by their grammatical function in the sentence. The noun itself has to be in the genitive case because this combination will create an Idaafa.
a. I met five students (f).قابلتُ خَمسَ طالباتٍ.
b. Five students (m) came. خَمسَةُ طلابٍ. حضَرَ
50. Plurals. There are three types of plural in Arabic:
a. The Masculine Sound plural is created by ( ونَ ) suffixed to the noun in the nominative case, and ( ينَ) in both genitive and accusative cases.
teachers (m) مُدرِّسونَ ، مُدرِّسينَ ، مُدرِّسينَ
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b. The Feminine sound plural is created by dropping the Taa’ MarbuuTa and replacing it with ( اتٌ) for the nominative case and (اتٍ ) for the accusative & genitive cases.
teachers مُدرِّساتٌ ، مُدرِّساتٍ ، مُدرِّساتٍ
c. The Broken plural is an irregular form. Even though several nouns may exhibit the same “broken” pattern, one has to learn the words individually.
dog(s), cat(s) کلبٌ / کِلابٌ ، قِطـٌّ / قِططـٌّ
51. Numbers (Revisited). It was mentioned earlier that numbers that proceed nouns should take the opposite gender of those nouns. An additional rule which you need to consider is that unlike English, the noun has to be in plural only between 3-10. After that the noun has to be singular in the accusative case. This is another example of تمييز“accusative of distinction.”
إشتريتُ خمسة َ عَشرَ قلماً.
I bought fifteen pencils.
Arabic which
52. أيَّـة ُ / أيُّboth mean “which” (as a question word). The first is used for masculine while the second is used for feminine. The noun which follows either one of them has to be in the genitive case. The implication is that the two nouns create Idaafa. Please notice that أيَّـة ُ / أيُّcarry the vowel of the original case of the noun you ask about.
أيَّـة ُ مَجلـَّةٍ هذهِ؟
a. Which magazine (subject-nominative) is this?
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أيَّ طالبٍ شاهدتِ؟
b. Which student (m) (object-accusative) did you (f) see?
إلی أيـَّةِ مدينةٍ سافرتَ؟
c. To which city (object of a prep.-genitive) did you travel?
53. Verb Object Pronouns. We mentioned earlier that object pronouns are suffixed to the transitive verbs.
شاهدَها في مَحطةِ القطاراتِ.
He saw her at the train station.
54. Object Pronouns of Prepositions. The object pronouns for transitive verbs are the same for the intransitive verbs which take prepositions. An exception to this is the object pronoun for the first person, أنا , which becomes (ي) for some prepositions.
ذهَبَتْ معي إلی السوق ِ.
She went with me to the market.
Please remember that the object pronouns in such linguistic environment are attached to prepositions, not the verbs.
The list of verb and preposition object pronouns suffixes includes the following:
Object Subject Independent
1. أنا ـتُ ـني / (ي)
2. أنتَ ـتَ ـكَ
3. إنتِ ـتِ ـكِ
4. هو -َ ـهُ
5. هي ـتْ ـها
6. نحن ـنا ـنا
7. أنتم ـتُم ـکُم
8. أنتُنَّ ـتُنَّ ـکُنَّ
9. هُم ـوا ـهُم
10. هُنَّ ـنَ ـهُنَّ
55. Prepositions which end with Alif MaQsura, (ی) will reclaim their original (ي ) form when any object pronoun is attached to them. Check the following example:
سَلـَّمَ عليها عندما شاهدَها في مَحطةِ القطاراتِ.
He greeted her when he saw her at the train station.
56. Feminine Sound Plurals take the genitive marker for the accusative case.
شاهدنا الطالباتِ في مَکتبِ البريدِ.
We saw the students (f) at the post office.
57. The Roots. Most Arabic words can be attributed to some 3-letter root, where
57. The Roots radicals are referred to by means of a prototypical root, فَعَلَ. فstands for the first radical, عfor the second, and لfor the third. This 3-letter root form is the entry you need to use when you want to check out any word in any Arabic dictionary. You should know by now how to dissect words in order to get to that root. Mainly, you need to drop off any gender and number markers of the noun/adjective. In case of the verbs, you need to drop off any subject, tense, and mood markers.
58. The Verb Form Numbers system is quite old, going back to the earliest European Arabic grammars such as that of Guillaume Postal, Paris, ca. 1538 and Pedro de Alcala’ ca. 1613. Their order ofnumbering is the same as that which we are familiar with today. Another grammar was published in Rome ca. 1622 which uses the numbering system but has forms II and IV switched. Erpenius’ grammar was only superseded in 1810 by the grammar of De Sacy, who used the same system which has been in vogue ever since. Incidentally, the numbering system was also used in older grammars of Hebrew, but seems to have fallen out of usage.
The system, an extremely useful mnemonic device is not entirely unrelated to the traditional work of صَرف, for it follows the order of المجرَّد and المزيد .The use of numbering, however, is the Latin, European innovation which might have been a claque on some aspect of the study of Latin grammar. At the very least, it is well known that Latin grammar traditionally numbers the different classes of conjugation. De Sacy is careful to make clear in his presentation the verb forms that they fall into groups of
المزيد بحرف ، المزيد بحرفين، المزيد بثبلثةِ حُروف
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Most verbs in Arabic can be classified into ten forms. These forms are:
1. فَعَلَ دَرَسَ 6. تَفاعَلَ تَراسَلَ
2. فَعَّلَ دَرَّسَ 7. إنفَعَلَ إنقَلـَبَ
3. فاعَلَ شاهَدَ 8. إفتَعَلَ إرتَفَعَ
4. أفعَلَ أقبَلَ 9. إفعَلَّ إحمَرَّ
5. تَفَعَّلَ تَحَدَّثَ 10. إستَفعَلَ إستَخدَمَ
Furthermore, each transitive pattern has an automatic passive counterpart where the stem short vowel Ftha and Kasra are replaced by Dhamma and Kasra.
To learn more about these forms, please check the computer program ARAFORM. You will find it and other programs at the following website: