Lesson 57 – الدَّرْسُ السَّابِعُ وَالْخَمْسُونَ

The six nouns - الأَسْمَاءُ السِّتَّة

The declension of the six nouns – إِعْراب الأَسْمَاءِ السِّتَّةِ

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• We now clearly understand what the Arabic six nouns are, and what the meaning of their name is. Now we will try to learn the irregular rules of declension in which the six nouns agree.
• The six nouns are declinable nouns. The declinable nouns are the nouns which have different endings according to the grammatical case, i.e. according to their position in the sentence.
• So the six nouns have different endings in the three grammatical cases affecting the declinable nouns.
• The following table shows, with examples, the three grammatical cases of the regular noun, with the original three signs (i.e. the example below is a regular noun, we will then compare with the ‘six nouns’ further below):

• You may notice from the above mentioned table that the word (أم) is not one of the six nouns, and that it is a normal (regular) noun, so the vowel on last letter of that noun changes according to the declension case. In the first sentence it is in the nominative case, so it has /đammah/ on the last letter (أُمُّ/ummu/). In the second sentence it is in the accusative case, so it is ended with /fatħah/ on the last letter (أُمَّك /ummak/). In the third sentence it is in the genitive case, so it is signed with /kasrah/ on its last letter (الأُمِّ).
• The six nouns are also able to take the grammatical cases mentioned above; the nominative, the accusative, and the genitive case, but they have different sign (endings) in each of these cases. The following table shows the difference between the declension signs of the normal noun, and the declension signs of the five nouns.

• We mentioned in the previous lesson that the sound masculine plural is irregularly declinable with /alif/ in nominative case, and /yā’/ in accusative or genitive case. The declension of the six nouns is different, because they are ended with /wāw/ in the nominative case, /alif/  in the accusative case, and  /yā’/ in the genitive case. Here are some examples of this declension: