Lesson 28 – الدَّرْسُ الثَّامِنُ وَالْعِشْرُونَ

Conjugation of Verbs in Arabic: Past, Present and Imperative - تَصْرِيف الْفِعْلِ: الْمَاضِي وَالْمُضَارِعُ وَالأَمْرُ

Differences between Verbs, Nouns and Particles

• We are still in lesson twenty eight of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
• The Arabic sentence is composed of a number of types of words. A word in Arabic can be a noun, a verb, or a particle. Key parts of speech in Arabic:
• Below are some examples of the different types of words in Arabic:

A-  Noun الاسْمُ:

• We have already studied Arabic nouns in previous lessons and learnt some of their signs, as follows:

• In the first example, the word (Muhammad مُحَمَّدٌ) is a proper noun (i.e. a name of a person or thing) and the sign on its final letter is the tanwīn of đammah (–ٌ) on the final letter of the word.
• In the second example, the noun is the word (aŧ-ŧaξām الطَّعَامُ) and the sign of this is the prefix (al-) before the noun.
• In the third example, the noun is the word (Faŧimah (فَاطِمَةُ and its sign is the affixed (ة) ta' marbūŧah تَاءٌ مَرْبُوطَةٌ that is attached to the feminine noun.
• In the fourth example, the noun is (al-mudhākara الْمُذَاكَرَةِ) and the sign here is –in addition to the prefixed (al-) it is in the genitive case (Maĵrūr مَجْرُورٌ) as it is preceded by the preposition (fi فِي) – hence the last letter takes a Kasrah.
• In the fifth example, the noun is the word (al-ξashā’ الْعَشَاءِ) and the sign of the noun here is that it is also in the genitive case (Maĵrūr). It is Maĵrūr due to the annexation as the genitive has also to do with nouns only.

B-  Verb الْفِعْلُ:

• Verbs have their own signs that distinguish them from nouns. This is what we are going to discuss in this lesson. See the following examples:

• The verb has certain signs through which we can identify it and distinguish it from the noun.  To illustrate, verbs do not have the signs of nouns we have mentioned above – e.g.:
• The tanwīn.
• The prefix (al-).
• The genitive case (being preceded by a preposition).
• The affix (ة).
• We already learnt that there are three types of verbs: past, present and imperative. The imperative has the same formula in English as in Arabic, which distinguishes it from the present and past forms.
• If we look at the table above, we see what is typically called the present verb signs. All present verbs start with one of the following letters (أ، ي، ت، ن), which are called the present form letters حُرُوفُ الْمُضَارَعَةِ, that is the letters that have to do with the present verb only. A present verb cannot start with any other letters but those four ones.

• The present verb is always prefixed with the present form letter حَرْفُ الْمُضَارَعَةِ. It is not necessary to be affixed with a letter. In case it is affixed with letters like -āni as in (antumā taktubāni  أنتما تَكْتُبانِ), -ūna as in(antum taktubūna أنتُم تكْتُبونَ) and -īna as in (anti taktubīna أنتِ تَكْتُبِينَ), these letters indicate either the dual, plural or feminine.
• If we have another look at the above table in the previous section – i.e. showing present and past tense verbs, we will see clearly the past tense verb signs, because all past verbs are suffixed and not prefixed with letters – i.e. the letter to indicate the pronoun comes after the verb.  This pronoun is the doer (person performing the action) in the verbal sentence, as in the following examples:

• The sign of the past verb is therefore that it comes either without any letter such as kataba كَتَبَ (this is the standard “root” form we use when we discuss a verb in Arabic) or with suffixed pronouns such as تُ، تَ، تِ))  as in katabtu, katabta and katabti كَتَبْتُ، كَتَبْتَ، كَتَبْتِ, or the plural of these pronouns (نَا، تُمْ، تُنَّ) as in katabna, katabtum and katabtunna (كَتَبْنَا، كَتَبْتُمْ، كَتَبْتُنَّ).

C-  Particle الْحَرْفُ:

• The third part of speech in Arabic mentioned above is the particle. The meaning of a particle is often understood in the context of the sentence and words before and after the particle. The sign of the particle is that it does not accept the signs of nouns or verbs. Every Arabic word that does not have the signs of either nouns or verbs is a particle.  Prepositions are examples of particles. There are many prepositions in Arabic. Some examples of particle are below: