هذه and تلك are the feminine equivalents for هذا and ذلك

Whenever any of these four words is followed by a definite noun we have one unit meaning “this noun”. For example هذا الكتابُ means “this book” and ذلك البليدُ means “that moron”. (These are phrases, not sentences. Note that all four demonstratives end in a vowel, so no helping vowel is needed for elision.) Also, be aware that phrases such as هذا الكتابُ do not mean “This is the book” but only “this book”. These phrases often serve as the subject of an equational sentence as in: هذا الطالب جميلٌ “This student is handsome.”

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 begins a sentence we always pronounce hamza and its fatha. However, look at this: أنتَ المدير “You are the director.” The normal American student will read this as “Anta almudiir” but the Arab will read it “Antalmudir.” Oh no.

Here is what has happened. The hamza, when written on the definite article, and on some other words, none of which have been introduced yet, will disappear when it is preceded by another word. In the sentence above أنتَ comes before المدير. The final fatha of the word أنتَ kicks out the hamza (elides the hamza) completely along with the fatha written over the hamza. Thus instead of having “fatha – hamza – fatha” followed by the ل , we now have only the first fatha and the ل. The first fatha followed by the ل make the Arab’s pronunciation of our sentence above sound like one word. The hamza and fatha of the definite article will always be replaced by the final vowel of the preceding word. Thus أنتِ المديرة is pronounced “Antilmudiira.” Please note that in this lesson no other word which begins with hamza will lose the hamza in this way. For now, only the hamza on the definite article will elide. In future lessons I will tell you how to know when to elide the hamza.

When the hamza is elided a “wasla” is written in its place. The wasla looks like a dhamma with a tail and is written over the alif. The wasla, like other diacritical markers, is usually written only in the Qur’an, children’s books, and in some text books. It will not be used in this text.

Now, what do you think happens if you make a word definite which begins with a sun letter and then elide the hamza? For example, how would you pronounce أنت الطّالبُ ? The Arab will say Antattaalib.” Here the hamza and its fatha are elided just as before, but since طالب begins with a sun letter we do not pronounce the ل of the definite article. Instead we go all the way over to the ط and pronounce it with a shadda.

As you will see as you go through this book, most Arabic words will end with some sort of vowel. (This is because nouns and adjectives usually have case endings and the case endings are vowels.) However, we have already seen some Arabic words which do not. Examples are هَل, مَن and مِنْ. So what happens if we want to say: هل المدير بليد؟ . In most cases, whenever the hamza of the definite article is preceded by a word which does not end in a vowel, we add the vowel kasra to that word and it elides the hamza. Thus in the sentence above we add a kasra to هل getting هَل المدير pronounced “halilmudiir.” The only exception to this rule so far is the word مِنْ. When it precedes the definite article we add to it a helping vowel of fatha. This is the only word in the language to which we will add a fatha as a helping vowel. In later lessons you will learn when to add a dhamma as a helping vowel – and that is all there is to know.

Reality Check

Some instructors and some textbooks are very strict about eliding the hamza and the use of helping vowels. In fact, you will hear a lot of these things done when listening to news broadcasts. However, in other situations when native speakers of Arabic are speaking in MSA, especially in interviews and in discussion formats, there is less elision of the hamza and the dhamma and fatha are not usually used as helping vowels. Instead, when a speaker uses a helping vowel, it is usually a kasra, which is what is often done in colloquial Arabic.

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 the appropriate form of the verb “to be” and place it first in the sentence. In Arabic, we just put هل as the first word of a statement in order to make that statement into a question. For example, انتَ طالب “You are a student” is made into a question by placing هل first, so we get انتَ طالب؟ هل.

(Note that هل, like all questions words, does not affect the case of any word in the sentence.) Similarly we can make المدير بليد “The director is a moron” into a question by putting هل first and getting:

هل المديرُ بليد — “Is the director a moron?”

ما has many uses in Arabic. One of them is as the question word “what,” used to refer to things. For example, ما هذا؟ means “What is this?” ما is not used to refer to people.

من means “who” and is used to refer to people. من هذا؟ means “Who is this?” من أنتَ؟ means, “Who are you?” Do not get the question word مَنْ confused with the preposition مِنْ which means “from”. When these two words are unvowelled (i.e. always) they look alike and new students tend to read them incorrectly.

أين means “where” and is only used in a question. أين المديرُ؟ means “Where is the director?” If you want to know where someone is from, you use the preposition مِنْ along with أين. For example, “Where are you from?” is rendered in Arabic مِنْ أين انت؟ Note that مِنْ comes before أين and that it will look just like مَنْ since it will not be vocalized. Therefore it is the CONTEXT that tells you what the word is. Context is going to play a big role in your study of Arabic in future lessons.

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 case may seem to be a foreign concept to you, you should have little trouble with it here. Many languages have many more cases than Arabic does and they are much more complicated.

Case refers to the form a noun or an adjective takes depending on its function in a sentence. For example, a noun functioning as the subject of a sentence will have a different case than it would have if it were the direct object. In general, different cases are indicated by changes in the voweling attached to the ends of nouns and adjectives. In Arabic there are three cases. We will do one case in this lesson, another in the next lesson, and the last case will be covered in lesson three. At that point you will know about 90 percent of everything you will ever need to know about case. The rest of what you will need to know will be treated at appropriate times in this book.

Case endings in Arabic are applied to most nouns and adjectives. They are not applied to the pronouns such as انا and أنت, nor do they apply to singular demonstratives such as هذه and هذا. Case is not applied at all to words used to form questions such as أينَ and مَن Furthermore, this text will not use any cases with proper nouns. There will be plenty of examples below so you will see what is going on and how easy it really is.

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 a sukuun over the ل of the definite article and that the ل is written in initial form.

If a word begins with the letters ب ج ح خ ع غ ف ق ك م ه و ي or with a hamza (which will be seated on an alif), we place a sukuun on the ل of the definite and pronounce the ل. Thus ألْمُدَرِّس is pronounced “almudarris”.

If a word begins with any of the rest of the letters of the alphabet something else happens. Let’s take the Arabic word for sun, شَمْس and make it definite. We add أل to شَمْس just as we would to any other word and we get أَلشَّمس . Can you see what is different? First of all, there is no sukuun on the ل of the definite article. Second, there is a shadda over the ش which is the first letter of the indefinite noun. The ل has been assimilated into the ش and will not be pronounced. Consequently أَلشَّمس is pronounced ash-shams. In this situation you can tell that the word is definite by the sound of the hamza and the fatha, and by hearing the shadda on the ش. You will not hear the ل at all. However, the ل must be written. The letters which cause the J to be assimilated are:

ت ث د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ل ن

This group of letters is known as the “sun letters” حروف شمسية . because they all assimilate the ل just as the ش does in the word شمس The first group of letters, those which require that a sukuun be placed on the ل , are known as “moon letters” حروف قمرية because the word for moon قمر begins with ق which does not require assimilation of the ل.

Students usually balk when they first learn of this phenomenon. Often they try to memorize which letters are sun letters and which are moon letters. Normally, I do not recommend that a student do so. Instead, under normal circumstances, a student can learn when to assimilate the J and when not to by listening to the instructor, to the tapes that usually accompany the standard Arabic text books, and by speaking Arabic in class. However, if you are reading this book it is likely that you are not studying Arabic under normal circumstances and you may wish to memorize the sun and moon letters. One thing that may help you a lot (and also facilitates learning which letters are which when you practice speaking and listening) is that the sun letters are all pronounced near the front of the mouth, while the moon letters, with the exception of the ج and the و, are pronounced further back.

Since Arabic texts are virtually never vocalized, you will not see the shadda on the first letter of a definite word beginning with a sun letter, nor will you see the sukuun on the ل when a word begins with a moon letter. You will already have to know what to do every time you see a word with the definite article. At the end of this chapter is a drill which will give you some practice.

Lest you think that Arabic is a tough language and that even making a word definite entails quite a hassle, be aware that the definite article in Arabic does not show gender, number, or case, unlike other languages supposedly easier than Arabic.

It might also interest you to know that the definite article is often part of Arabic names, especially surnames. This is why you may have seen Arabic names in the newspapers beginning with “al” and then with a dash separating the article from the name. Since most (but not all) American journalists working the Middle East are so unfamiliar with the language that they do not even know how to use the definite article, you sometimes will see names such as السادات spelled al-Sadat at one point and as-Sadat at another point. When radio and television journalists read these names out loud, they do not know what to do with the “al”. Sometimes, it becomes a middle initial “L” as in Anwar L. Sadat. Don’t be an ignoramus like an American journalist. Learn how to pronounce the definite article. Go do Drill 1 at the end of this chapter now. Then come back and start reading below.