Part 1 – Chapter 1

  • The case endings on the last word in a sentence are usually not pronounced. Nor are they pronounced before any other natural pause. Thus in this sentence هذا طالبٌ جديدٌ  the last word will usually be pronounced “jadiid” without the case ending. If the word is feminine, we will not pronounce the ة or its…

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  • H: Gender

    Like Spanish, Arabic has two genders, masculine and feminine. Most nouns not referring to people are arbitrarily assigned a gender, again, just like Spanish. For example, كتاب is masculine, but سيارة is feminine. You can usually spot a feminine word, because, just as in Spanish, it has a feminine suffix attached to it. The suffix…

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  • هذا is a masculine demonstrative pronoun meaning “this”.ما هذ؟ means “What is this?”. هذا طالبٌ means “This is a student”. هذا is the subject of the sentence but it is not a word that has case. ذلِكَ is a masculine demonstrative pronoun meaning “that”. As in English, ذلك “that” refers to objects which are more…

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  • We have already seen the definite article in Arabic – أل . The first letter of the article is actually the hamza. The hamza is seated on an alif. The alif has no phonetic value when it is a seat for the hamza. The vowel on the hamza is a fatha. Whenever a definite word…

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  • Arabic, like English, adds words to sentences in order to form questions. Here we will deal with some of the most common interrogative words used in Arabic, هَلْ , ما, مَن and أيْن. هَلْ is an interrogative used in sentences such as “Are you a student?”. In this kind of sentence in English, we take…

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  • The nominative case is used in an Arabic sentence primarily in two situations. The first is for the subject of any sentence. That is to say, until I tell you otherwise, the subject of any sentence will always be in the nominative case. The only other time a word will be in the nominative case…

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  • C: Case

    Nouns and adjectives in Arabic are declined for case. Part One of this book will focus a great deal of attention. If you are new to the language, it may interest you to note that American students of this language have a very tough time with cases. But cases in Arabic are very easy. Although…

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  • Words are made definite in Arabic by attaching أل to the beginning of the word. For example, مُدَرِّس means “a teacher”. “The teacher” is rendered by ألْمُدَرِّس. The only difference is that we have attached the definite article أل to the noun. The definite article is always attached to the noun. Note that there is…

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  • There are two kinds of sentences in Arabic, those with a verb and those without a verb. For the first few lessons we will deal with those sentences which have no verb. These sentences have the fancy name “equational sentences” but do not be put off by the terminology. Equational sentences are sentences which would…

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