Lesson 28 – الدَّرْسُ الثَّامِنُ وَالْعِشْرُونَ

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

How to formulate the present and imperative verbs from the past verb? - كَيْفَ نَصُوغُ الْفِعْلَ الْمُضَارِعَ وَالأَمْرَ مِنَ الْفِعْلِ الْمَاضِي؟

• Let's Continue to learn Arabic through our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course contains Arabic grammar, Arabic syntax, Arabic morphology and more.
• It is useful to think of the Arabic verb as being made of individual letters. The number of letters in the past tense form determines the change of signs in the present and imperative forms.
• The simple trilateral verb (which is composed of three letters) is the most common form; examples of this include بَعَثَ، هَدَمَ، دَرَسَ، غَسَل، مَسَحَ، كَنَسَ.   This past form is composed of three letters, and that is why the present form derived from it starts with a fatħah on its initial prefixed letter, as in the following examples:

• The present form ends (originally) with a đamma.
• The imperative form starts with alif.  The alif is either:
• Maksūrah - in this case the penultimate letter in the present form is maftūħ such as اِبْعَثْ or maksūr such as اِهْدِمْ.
• Mađmūma - in this case the penultimate letter in the present form is mađmūm such as (اُكْنُسْ، اُدْرُسْ)
• The four letter verb (which is composed of four letters in the past tense form) such as أَخَرَجَ، دَرَّسَ، خَاصَمَ، أَسْرَفَ، دَنَّسَ، شَاهَدَ.
• The present form of these verbs always starts with a đammah on its initial letter.
• As for the imperative form, the sign on the penultimate letter changes into kasrah, as in the following table:

• Five letter verb (that is made up of five letters in the past tense form) such as اِرْتَفَعَ، تَقَدَّمَ، اِنْقَلَبَ، انْتَشَرَ، تَبَرَّأَ، اِنْبَهَرَ.

• The present form of these verbs starts with fatħah on its initial letter as the case in the trilateral verb.
• The imperative form of these verbs is derived through changing the diacritical sign on the penultimate letter to kasrah, as in the following table:

• The only difference between the imperative and past forms of the verbs (تَكَلَّمَ، تَصَوَّر) is that the fatħah vowel-ending changes into sukūn.
• The six letter verb (that is made up of six letters). This verb has only one form, as follows: اسْتَخْرَجَ، اسْتَعْمَلَ، اِسْتَخْدَمَ، اِستَعْلَمَ، اِسْتَبْشَرَ، اِسْتَكْبَرَ.
• These verbs are similar to the five letter verb as its present form starts with the fatħah on its initial letter and the kasrah on the penultimate letter, as in the following examples:

• At the end of this part, it is worth mentioning that the subject of the imperative verb is always one of the following (note – all of these are in the 2nd person – i.e. person(s) we are speaking to that is / are present): (anta, anti, antumā, antum or antunna) أنْتَ، أنْتِ، أنْتُمَا، أنْتُمْ، أنْتُنَّ.
• Let us look at some examples of sentences using the 3 different forms of verbs that we have discussed (past, present and imperative).

Please use some appropriate pictures for the sentences.