Lesson 44 – الدَّرْسُ الرَّابِع وَالأرْبَعُونَ

Pronouns (1 of 5) – الضَّمَائرُ (١ من ٥)

The detached pronouns الضَّمير المُنْفَصِل

Introduction - مُقَدِّمَةٌ

  • This is lesson forty four of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • It is hard enough to study all the Arabic pronouns in one lesson, so we prefer to divide them into five lessons. In this introduction we will see the plan of these five lessons. We will have a general idea about the types of the Arabic pronouns, and how they will be divided in the incoming lessons In-Shā'-Allâh (God willing).
  • We learnt earlier that the Arabic words are divided into three categories: noun, verb, and particle.
  • We also studied that the nouns are divided into declinable and indeclinable nouns, and that there are some nouns that are always definite and this is why they do not need prefixing with “al-” (the definition article), annexation or the tanwīn. We discussed this type of declinable nouns in Part 4 of Lesson 25.
  • In these five lessons, we will discuss one of the indeclinable nouns that are always definite In-Shā’a-Allâh. These are the pronouns الضَّمائِر /ađ-đamā’ir/.
  • The pronoun can be one of two types: prominent pronoun (الضَّمير الْبارِز /ađ-đamīr albāriz/) and latent pronoun (الضَّمير المُسْتَتِر /ađ-đamīr almustatir/). The prominent pronoun keeps an apparent form in the oral or written composition, while the latent pronoun disappears after the verb whether in speaking or in writing.
  • The prominent personal pronoun (الضَّمير الْبارِز /ađ-đamīr albāriz/) is divided into two categories:
  • See these examples of the prominent pronouns (الضَّمائر الْبارِزة /ađ-đamā'ir albārizah/) in the following table:

Attached pronoun

الضَّمِيرُ الْمُتَّصِلُ

Detached pronoun

الضَّمِيرُ الْمُنْفَصِلُ

 

Genitive

مَحَلّ جَرّ

Accusative

مَحَلّ نَصْب

Nomination

مَحَلّ رَفْع

Accusative

مَحَلّ نَصْب

Nominative

مَحَلّ رَفْع

جَاءَ وَالِدُنَا.

أَشْكُرُكُمْ.

أَيْنَ ذَهَبْتَ؟

إِيَّاكَ نَعْبُدُ.

أَنَا وَأَنْتَ مُسَافِرَانِ.

Example

Our father has come

I thank you

Where did you go?

It is you that we adore

I and you are travelling

Translation

Jā’a wālidunā

ashkurukum

Ayna dhahabta

Iyyāka naξbudu

Anā wa anta musāfirān-i

Transliteration

  • The second type is the latent pronoun (الضَّمير المُسْتَتِر /ađ-đamīr almustatir/), which is divided into two parts: obligatorily latent, and permissibly latent, and these two types can occupy four positions:
  • In the following table we can see some examples for the latent pronouns:

With astonishment verb

تَعَجُّب

With exclusion verb

اسْتِثْناء

Pro-agent

نائِب فاعل

Agent

فاعِل

 

مَا أَجْمَلَ الرَّبِيعَ.

حَضَرَ الطُّلَّابُ مَا عَدَا وَاحِدًا.

الدَّرْسُ فُهِمَ جَيِّدًا.

سَوْفَ نَكْتُبُ الدَّرْسَ.

Example

How beautiful is the spring

The students have come except one

The lesson was understood well

We will write the lesson

Translation

Mā aĵmala ar-rabī’

Ħsđara aŧŧâlibu mā ξadā wāħidan

Ad-darsu fuhima ĵayyidan

Sawfa naktubu ad-darsa

Transliteration