In Arabic grammar, the harakaat, or vowels that appear on the last word, can be one of three things: damma, kasra, or fatha. Not coincidentally, there are three cases that a word can take:nominative (marfoo‘), genitive (majruwr), and accusative (mansoob).
In almost all cases (with only a handful of exceptions), these three cases each map to a different harkaat:
If the word is nominative (marfoo‘), it takes the damma case.
If the word is genitive (majruwr), it takes the kasra case.
If the word is accusative (mansoob), it takes the fatha case.
(Words can also end in sukoon, but really, that’s just something you do when you stop on a word when you speak.)
There are exceptions to this, such as words that are mabani; but most of the time, you can look at any word and decide what case it takes. And this helps immensely in understanding and parsing Arabic sentences.
To conclude, ponder the following example: the word kitaab (كِتاب) means “book.” It can take the following forms:
Kitaabun, with damma, when it’s in the marfoo‘ case, OR
Kitaabin, with kasra, when it’s in the majruwr case, OR
Kitaaban, with fatha, when it’s in the mansoob case.
More to come...
Last edited by Na7lah; 03-16-2009 at 05:23 PM.
Learn silence as you have learned speech.
Speech will guide you, and silence will protect you.
In Arabic, all nouns fall into one of two genders: masculine (muthakkar): مُذَكِّر or feminine (mu’annath): مُئنِّث. There is no other possibility.
This is different from English–in English, we have both categories (”priest” is masculine, while “nun” is feminine) but we also have a third, gender-neutral category. This includes words like “it”, “house”, “car”, “waterfall”, and so on.
So how do you express words like it, house, and car in feminine? These words have genders in Arabic! House is bayt (بَيت) which is masculine; car is sayaarah (سَيَارَة) which is feminine; and it can be huwa (هُوَ) if it’s masculine, or hiya (هِيَ) if it’s feminine.
This illustrates an important point–in many cases, there are two (or more) words for a concept–which includes masculine and feminine versions–like shaqqah (شَقَّة), which is a feminine word for house.
Learn silence as you have learned speech.
Speech will guide you, and silence will protect you.
The following are some very commonly-used words in Arabic. Note that they are all singular and masculine. (To prevent confusion, the final letter will have tanween damma on it.)
kitaabun (كِتَابٌ): book
kalbun (كَلبٌ): dog
sariyrun (سَرِيرٌ): bed
qalamun (قَلَمٌ): pen
miftahun (مِفتَاحٌ): key
kursiyun (كُرسِيٌ): chair
masjidun (مَسجِدٌ): mosque
qittun (قِطٌّ): cat
qamiysun (قَمِيصٌ): shirt
baabun (بَابٌ): door
Learn silence as you have learned speech.
Speech will guide you, and silence will protect you.
Translation: Indeed your Lord is Allah, the one who created the heavens and the earth in six days … [Surah ‘Aaraaf, verse 54]
So the question arises, how can you tell what case a sound feminine plural noun is in when it has kasra? Is it majruwr, or mansoob? The answer is, you must know Arabic grammar to understand.
Learn silence as you have learned speech.
Speech will guide you, and silence will protect you.
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