Lesson 86 – الدَّرْسُ السَّادِسُ والثَّمانون

The style of preference (comparison) - أُسْلُـوبُ التَّفْضِيلِ

Introduction - مُقَدِّمَةٌ

  • This is lesson eighty six of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • We can express preference in Arabic by using the nominal patternأفْعَل
  • It is an Arabic derived noun which indicates the favoring description of someone or something over another or over all others.
  • This Arabic pattern is used to make a normal or a superlative comparison between two or more objects in a certain quality.
  • Consider the following examples:

English

Arabic

Khalid is taller than Ali

خالِدٌ أَطْوَلُ مِنْ عَلِيٍّ

Khalid is the tallest student in the class

خَالِدٌ أطْوَل التَّلاميذِ في الفصْلِ

Khalid is taller than Ali

خالِدٌ أكثر مِنْ عَلِيٍّ طولاً

  • We notice from the above mentioned example that the preference structure consists of four parts as follows:

1-    The preferred.

2-    The preference noun, which is on the pattern (أفْعَل).

3-    The forlorn (the preferred to).

4-    The common quality. This can be expressed by the same pattern of (أفْعَل) as in the first and second example above, or expressed by another noun as in the third example.

  • The pattern (أفْعَل) is to be formed from the non-augmented (denuded) past verb under many conditions as follows (for example):

1-    The verb from which we form (أفْعَل) should be trilateral, i.e. consists of three letters.

2-    (أفْعَل) has to be formed from a variable verb, i.e. not from an inert verb (the inert verb which is not conjugated in all tenses, as (نِعْمَ) of praise, and (ليْسَ) the negating verb).

  • In this lesson we will learn all the conditions of the pattern (أفْعَل) of preference noun, how to form it, and the declension of the its sentence with examples, In-Shaa’-Allaah (God willing).