Arabic
Foundations

Meet the alphabet

Read the letters from right to left. Use the dots to tell similar shapes apart. Some alphabet charts count 28 letters and treat hamzah separately. If you count hamzah alongside the written letters, you get 29 entries. Hamzah represents a consonant sound. Plain alif can represent a long vowel.

Letter shapes

Arabic runs from right to left. A letter can look different on its own or when it joins a neighbor. Follow the dots and the basic shape to recognize it. Read the row below from the right.

Some letters join to the letter on their right but break the connection to the next letter on their left. In this word, the alif breaks the connection before the last bāʾ.

Alif and hamzah do different jobs

Say “uh-oh” slowly. The small catch in your throat before “oh” is the kind of sound hamzah represents. A plain alif can stretch an a sound. When alif carries a hamzah, the hamzah represents the catch.

Focus on recognizing the sound and the seat for now. You’ll compare the two types of initial hamzah when you learn connected reading.

Three short vowel marks

A mark gives the consonant a short vowel. Fatḥah is a stroke above and gives a. Kasrah is a stroke below and gives i. Ḍammah is the small curved mark above and gives u.

Reading marks

Arabic letters join in different shapes depending on position. A short vowel is a mark, while a long vowel commonly uses an extra letter. Sukūn means no short vowel follows the consonant. Shaddah means the consonant is doubled. Tanwīn adds a final n sound in connected reading.

Three letters that lengthen vowels

First read the short vowel, then let the following letter stretch it. Alif follows fatḥah, wāw follows ḍammah, and yāʾ follows kasrah in these long-vowel patterns. Wāw and yāʾ can also be consonants, so check the neighboring vowel marks.

Read a word

Put the sounds together. Start with the first consonant and its vowel. Move to the next consonant, then lengthen its vowel when you meet alif. Finish with the last consonant. In connected reading, the final tanwīn here sounds like un.

Now you can study what the word does. “Book” names a thing. The next step gives that job a grammatical label.

Three Arabic word classes

English grammar often teaches eight familiar word classes. Traditional Arabic grammar uses three broad categories. Think of the Arabic categories as three baskets. A word that names something, describes it, or stands in for it can go in the same Arabic basket. The English labels still help us explain what each word does.

Compare all eight English labels

The three Arabic classes describe how Arabic words behave. Start with the English job, then check what kind of Arabic word performs it.

Why the mapping is approximate

English “under” can be a preposition while the Arabic word for “under” in Lesson 5 is a place noun. Likewise, English interjections have no single Arabic word-class equivalent. Classify the Arabic word by how it behaves in Arabic.

Point, then name

Imagine holding up a key. First say “this,” then name what you are holding. Arabic can put those two pieces together to make a complete present-tense sentence. English supplies “is” in the translation.

Imagine two desks

A book is in your hand. Another book is across the room. Both are books. The only part of your sentence that needs to change is the pointing word.

Ask what or who

Use the “what” question for a thing and the “who” question for a person. The pointing word can stay exactly where it is.

Ask for yes or no

Attach the question hamzah to the front of the sentence. Then listen for yes or no. If the guess is wrong, name the object in a new sentence.

Two kinds of questions

A word meaning “what” or “who” asks for missing information and belongs to the Arabic noun class in these examples. The question hamzah is a particle. It asks whether a whole statement is true.

Two distinctions to keep separate

Common nouns name a kind of thing. Proper nouns name a particular person or place. Definiteness is a separate question. A common noun can be definite, as in “the pen,” or indefinite, as in “a pen.” A name like Bilāl already identifies someone and needs no definite article. Some proper names take tanwīn, so tanwīn alone does not tell you whether a word is indefinite.

Make a noun specific

If you ask for a book, several books might do. If you ask for the book, you expect the listener to know which one. The Arabic article attaches to the front of the noun. In this pair, adding it also removes the final tanwīn, the doubled vowel mark.

Three noun cases

Case tells you about a word’s grammatical job. Compare the same regular singular noun across three short sentences. The three vowels here are starter patterns. Other noun types can show case differently, and some words keep the same form across jobs.

Look at the next letter

With a moon letter, you hear the article’s l sound. With a sun letter, the written lām remains, but the next consonant is pronounced doubled. Look for the shaddah on the sun letter.

Two hamzahs

The joining hamzah is pronounced when you begin with the word and drops in connected speech. The initial sound of the definite article works this way. The cutting hamzah is pronounced both when starting and when connecting. Compare “and the pen” with “and a father.”

Start a word, then connect it

Start with the word for “the book.” You hear the opening vowel. Now read it after “and.” The opening vowel drops because you’re already speaking. That is hamzat al-waṣl. When the first sound is hamzat al-qaṭʿ, keep the catch in both positions.

Say something about the book

The first word names the thing we are talking about. The second tells us something about it. Read it as a sentence with ‘is’ in English.

Build a location phrase

Think of a pen on a desk. The small word ‘on’ connects the pen to the desk. Look at the last vowel of ‘desk’ in this example. After the preposition it is kasrah, marking the genitive for this regular singular noun.

Listen for a joining vowel

In connected reading, the word for “from” can take an a sound before the article, as in the first row. That sound helps connect the words. The noun’s genitive ending is a separate change at the other end of the phrase.

Ask for the missing place

Start with ‘where’ and name the thing. An answer can be as short as ‘in the room.’ A full answer can put the thing and its location together.

Notice noun gender

Arabic groups nouns as masculine or feminine, including names of objects. The round letter at the end of ‘room’ is a common feminine clue. Learn each noun’s gender with the word because some feminine nouns have other endings.

Clues help you guess

Some feminine words have no visible marker, including “hand” and “eye.” Some masculine words or names have a round tāʾ. Learn gender with the noun.

Subject and predicate

First find what the sentence is about. That is the subject. Then find the information the sentence gives about it. That is the predicate. In a simple present-time statement, English often adds “is.”

A preposition and its partner

A preposition plus the noun it governs can answer “where?” The whole phrase can tell us something about the subject. The preposition itself is only one part of that phrase.

Put the thing first

In ‘the student’s bag,’ English puts the owner first. In this Arabic construction the bag comes first and the student follows. The second noun answers ‘whose bag?’

Look at both endings

The first noun in this construction has no article or tanwīn. Its final case vowel depends on its job in the sentence. The second noun is genitive. Here the student has the definite article, making the whole phrase definite.

Translate the relationship

The first noun can name a possession, a part, or something associated with the second noun. English might use an apostrophe or an “of” phrase. The second noun is genitive in each case.

Build a chain one noun at a time

Start with “a room,” then specify whose room it is. Add a door at the front. Now “room” has two jobs. It tells you which door, and the next noun tells you whose room. Its genitive ending comes from its first job.

Call someone directly

The calling particle comes before the person you are addressing. English often uses the name alone in conversation. Compare literal “O Bilāl!” with natural “Bilāl!”

Place and time words

A preposition and a place noun can both help answer “where?” Compare “on the table” with “under the table.” In the second expression, the Arabic place noun takes a genitive noun after it. Other words in this family can answer “when?”

Use the pattern for a place

An expression like ‘under the desk’ uses a place noun followed by a genitive noun. Compare it with ‘on the desk’ from Lesson 4. Both tell you where something is, but their opening words belong to different grammatical categories.

Same distance, different noun

Imagine a book and a bag right beside you. They are equally close. Use the masculine near form for the book and the feminine near form for the bag.

Apply it to people too

Use the same feminine near form when identifying a female student. Here the English pronoun for the person would be ‘she.’

Point across the room

A school is a grammatically feminine noun. If you are pointing to a school far away, choose the feminine far form.

Make two small decisions

First identify the noun’s grammatical gender. Then ask whether the referent is near or far. Use those two answers to find the form in the table below.

Point to one, two, or more

After you know the four singular forms, add number. The near plural form below works for groups of people of either gender. The dual forms distinguish gender and show a change of case. Begin by identifying pairs in the nominative before reading the other forms.

Point first, refer back later

First identify the object you are pointing at. Once everyone knows which bag you mean, use the feminine pronoun to say something about it. English usually calls the bag ‘it.’

Build a tiny conversation

Point to a distant school. Then refer back to the school and describe it. The words for ‘that’ and ‘it’ play different roles.

Three main shapes of a predicate

Start by asking what the sentence tells you about its topic. The answer may be a single expression, a location phrase, or a whole clause. This chart subdivides phrases into prepositional and adverbial, and clauses into nominal and verbal. The last two rows are a preview.

What to underline

In the pen examples, underline the entire location expression. In the father example, the whole clause about his father tells us something about the student. The pronoun meaning “his” links the clause back to the student.

Detached pronouns

First person means the speaker. Second person means the person you address. Third person means the person or thing you talk about. Arabic distinguishes one, two, and three or more in the second and third person. The traditional table has 14 slots and 12 distinct detached forms because two dual forms are each reused.

A detached pronoun stands on its own. An attached pronoun joins another word, as in “his pen.” Start with the singular rows and use the rest as a reference.

Separate root, pattern, and ending

A root is the set of consonants shared by related words. A pattern tells you how the consonants fit with vowels or extra letters. A conjugated form gives information about the subject and tense. Many roots have three consonants, and some have four.

Past tense and the verb endings

Say “he went,” “she went,” then “I went.” Watch the end of the Arabic verb. English uses “went” in all three, but Arabic changes the form. In a suitable context, the verb can tell you who went without a separate subject pronoun.