Glossary of Arabic Linguistic Terms

إظافة

Idafa, إظافة, is Arabic's version of the English possessive 's, a way of quickly introducing the preposition “of”: English has Jim's apple, whereas Arabic would say the apple (of) Jim.

Incidentally, English also simply places two nouns next to each other to form possession: “the kitchen table” —or طبلةُ المطبخِ. This is because English's possessive 's is only used with animate non-things.

Idafa is a noun phrase, and so can be iterated onto itself to create complex possessions: For example, سَرْقةُ جَوازِ سَفَرِ أِحَدِ اللاعِبِينَ the theft of the passport [literally "license of journey"] of one of the athletes

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Case endings for Idafa: Only one of “a/the/my”!

The first term of an Idafa will be in any case the sentence requires; and only the last term in an Idafa (however complex) can have the definite article or nunation or an attached possessive pronoun —this is like English, “a X's Y” or “the X's Y” or “my X's Y”— and this choice determines the definiteness of the Idafa. Also, all terms of an Idafa, other than the first term, must be in the genitive case: Ending with ـِـ or ـٍـ .

a nurse's book	كتابُ مُمرّضةٍ
the nurse's book	كتابُ ٱلْمُمرظةِ
my nurse's book	كتابُ مُمرّضتي

Note that nunnation is indefinite, whereas الـ and possessive-pronouns are definite.

noun

A word naming a person, object, or idea; for example: House, boy, freedom.

In Arabic, words are classified into 3 categories —in contrast to English's 8.

Kind	Description
اسم	Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc
فعل	Verbs: action words
حرف	Particles, such as prepositions في and علی

As such, the word “noun” when talking about Arabic will sometimes mean the more general category اسم.

root

The Arabic language is based on “roots” that link words of related meanings.

An Arabic “root” is the sequence of (usually 3) Arabic letters that carry the underlying meaning of a word, for example ش−ر−ب “to drink” and ح−م−ل “to carry”.

Vowels and consonants are added around the roots to create related words. Roots are the building blocks of the Arabic language and are helpful for guessing the meaning of vocabulary.

Generally foreign loan words, such as internet انترنت, fall outside the root system.

For more, see www.alhassy.com/arabic-roots

vowels

Arabs infer vowels from context, otherwise words alone such as حمل are ambigious: It could mean حَمَلَ “he carried” or حُمِلْ “he was carried”.

As an example sentence with vowels written, Prophet Muhammad is known to have said:

أنَا مَدِينَةُ الْعِلْمِ وَعَلَيٌ بَابُهَا

I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate

Incidentally, Ali was the one who commissioned the system of vowels. https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/the-beginning-of-dotting-and-diacritics-in-arabic/

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Arabic has only three short vowels, or حركات (literally: “movements”), which are written as small symbols above/below letters.

Vowel name	Vowel sound	Arabic	English example
Fatha; فتحة	a	ـَ	mat
Dhamma; ظمّة	u	ـُ	sugar
Kasra; كسرة	i	ـِ	bit

The “no vowel” marker is suukun/سكون: While هههه has its vowels guessed to be هَهَهَهَ “hahahah”, we obtain “hhhh” by using sukkun, هْهْهْهْ. It is important for consonant-vowel-consonant syllables, such as بَابْ “bab” which means door.

Incidentally, when a sound needs to be repeated twice, it is usually written once with a Shadda ـّـ to indicate the doubling. For example, فَهِمَ fahima “he understood” but فَهَّمَ fahhama “he explained”. Shadda is used with الـ + ‘sun letters’. Unlike the other short vowels, the Shadda is usually written even in informal Arabic, to avoid ambiguity.

Arabic has 3 long vowels, which are formed using specific letters after the short vowels:

Long vowel sound	Arabic	English example
aa	ـَا	far
ii	ـِي	meet
uu	ـُو	boot

Since short vowels are normally not written, letters ا ي و play two roles: They behave as long vowels aa,ii,uu (when preceded by short vowels) and also behave as consonant sounds a,y,w.

• For example, as a consonant, ي makes an English “y” sound; but as a long vowel it makes an “ii” sound.
• Occasionally, aa is written using ی (which is like ي but without the dots), or یٰ, rather than an alif. This always happens at the end of a word and is called alif maqsuura “broken alif”; for example علی “on” and موسیٰ “Musa”.

The following video reads all Arabic letters, where each letter is vowelised by one of the 3 short vowels. It's a really nice video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/U1Cl6W8EEBQ?start=6.

pronoun

A pronoun is a word that stands-in for a noun. For example, below we refer to someone in 3 different ways: “His” cat saw “him”, and “he” jumped!

• A personal pronoun replaces a noun that refers to a person (e.g., Jasim ate ≈ he ate),
• while a possessive pronoun replaces a noun that involves ownership (e.g., Jasim's book ≈ his book),
• and an objective pronoun replaces a noun that is having an action done to it (e.g., I saw Jasim ≈ I saw him.)

<hr> Below are Arabic's personal pronouns alongside their English translations.

	singular	plural
1	أنا   I	نَحْن  we
2m	أَنْتَ   you	أَنْتُم  you
2f	أَنْتِ   you	أَنتُن  you
3m	هُوَ   he/it	هُم   they
3f	هِيَ   she/it	هُنَّ   they

<hr> In Arabic, possessive and object pronouns are attached pronouns; they are joined to the end of a word: For example, house بیت becomes my house بیتِي, and from he helped نَصَرَ we get نَصَرَني he helped me. Arabic's object & possessive pronouns are the same, except for the “my/me” case.

	singular	plural
1	ـِي   my	ـنَا   our
2m	ـكَ   your	ـكُمْ   your
2f	ـكِ   your	ـكُنَّ   your
3m	ـَهُ   his	ـهُمْ   their
3f	ـَهَا   hers	ـهُنَّ   their

passive

A “passive” verb is one where the subject undergoes the action of the verb rather than carries out the action, for example حُملت “she was carried” and يُستخدم “it is used”.

transitive

A “transitive” verb is a verb that requires an object to express a complete thought, otherwise it is “intransitive”. Some verbs are both transitive and intransitive.

A “transitive” verb needs to transfer its action to something or someone —the object. In essence, transitive means “to affect something else.”

For example, “Please bring coffee.” would not be a complete thought without the object “coffee”. That is, “Please bring.” is an incomplete thought: What or whom should we bring? As such, “bring” is a transitive verb. In contrast, “Please sing.” is a complete thought, and so “sing” is an intransitive verb —actually, it's also transitive.

In Arabic, the Form-4 أفْعَلَ pattern turns intransitive verbs into transitive ones; and turns transitive verbs into doubly-transitive verbs —which means it takes two objects: E.g., “I gave the boy the ball”, here “gave” is doubly-transitive. E.g., in Form-4, ر−س−ل “to send” gives the transitive verb أرْسَلَ which means it can be followed by two objects: أرْسَلَ الولد لكتاب “The boy sent the book”.