Author Archives: mattbussey

Plurals in Arabic always refer to three or more things. Arabic has special forms to deal with two things. Americans hate the dual. However, unlike the plural business, which I admit is difficult, the dual is very easy. We will begin with nouns.   Nouns are made dual by the addition of the suffix انContinue reading “B: The Dual of Nouns, Adjectives, Pronouns, and Verbs”

Whether you realize it or not, you already know most of the rules of agreement in Arabic. There is really only one more thing you need to learn. First, I will review the rules you have had. Then I will discuss the one thing you do not yet know (well, since you have probably hadContinue reading “A: The Rules of Agreement in Arabic”

كُلٌّ is a noun which means “each” or “every” and sometimes means “all” depending upon the context. When كل is followed by an indefinite noun, it is translated as “each” or “every.” For example, كلُّ طالبٍ means “each student” or “every student.” The phrase كلُّ طالبٍ is an idaafa. That is why there is noContinue reading “F: The Words كلٌّ and بَعْضٌ”

The demonstrative pronouns هذا and هذه have a lovely broken plural. The plural for both of these words is هؤلاء. This plural is only used when referring to people and it is used for both genders. For example:   1. These students (masc.) are from Beirut. ١. هؤلاءِ الطلاب من بيروت. 2. These students (fem.)Continue reading “E: Plural Demonstrative Pronouns”

I briefly alluded to broken plurals at the beginning of this chapter. These are plurals which arise from internal and sometimes external changes to the singular noun. For example, the plural of كتاب is كتب The word كتب is a broken plural. Since you have had Arabic before, you know that broken plurals exist inContinue reading “D: Broken Plurals”

How would you say “the correspondents of the newspaper” in Arabic? What YOU would probably do is what most American students of Arabic usually do: they would say مراسلون الجريدة. Tsk tsk. Don’t do that. Masculine sound plurals in an idaafa as any term except the last term, loose the ن. You must drop theContinue reading “C: Masculine Sound Plurals in Idaafas and with Pronoun Suffixes”

You will like this. This is easy. The typical Arabic sentences begins with a verb. In Arabic such a sentence is known as جملة فِعليّة verbal sentence.” The subject, if included in the sentence, normally comes after the verb. Here are two examples.   1. The student studied his Arabic book. ١.درس الطالبُ كتابَهُ العربيّ.Continue reading “B: Verb-Subject Agreement”

A sound plural is a suffix which is added to the end of the word in order to indicate the plural. The suffixes reflect gender and case as well. First we will deal with masculine sound plurals and then with feminine ones.   Masculine sound plurals have the suffix ونَ attached to them in orderContinue reading “A: Sound Plurals”

In Chapter One we briefly discussed what is known as the “pausal form“. We noted that the case endings of words at the end of a sentence, or any other natural pause, are usually not pronounced. There is one exception to this. If the word in question is in the accusative case with the alifContinue reading “F: The Pausal Form Revisited”

We have covered so far two of the three cases in Arabic. Now we come to the last case, the accusative. The accusative is primarily used for the direct object of the verb but appears in other situations as well. These other situations will be discussed in other parts of this book. The information onContinue reading “E: Verbs – Past Tense and the Accusative Case”