Category Archives: Part 1 – Chapter 4

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”