Well, it’s that time again. Once again, it’s time for the In-Depth Blog Post. This time, it will be focused on grammar. This time, it’ll be text based as grammar revolves around modifying language to express details, rather than how words are pronounced.
Let’s start with pronouns.
| أنا | Me |
| انتَ | You (to a man) |
| انتِ | You (to a woman) |
| هو | He |
| هي | She |
In Arabic, there is a distinction between saying you to a man versus saying you to a woman.
The language also makes a distinction between masculine and feminine nouns, and the grammatical gender of the noun transfers to other parts of the sentence.
With that being said, let’s now look at the possessive variants of pronouns. I will use the word for house to demonstrate.
| بيتي | My house |
| بيتَك | Your house (to a man) |
| بيتِك | Your house (to a woman) |
| بيته | His house |
| بيتها | Her house |
In Arabic, short vowel marks are almost never used in day to day life. I have added them in as they distinguish words, but in practice, words like your house to either gender is written the same.
In feminine nouns, they almost always end in ة and are pronounced like ا when not modified. However, when altered for grammatical reasons, it sounds like ت. Here are the same pronouns, but for feminine nouns. This time, I’ll use the word for school.
| مدرستي | My school |
| مدرستَك | Your school (m) |
| مدرستِك | Your school (f) |
| مدرسته | His school |
| مدرستها | Her school |
This can be used with the word for “this” to make the phrase “this is [object]” or “this is [possessive pronoun] [object]”. In Arabic, there is no equivalent for is in this scenario. Once again, the word for this distinguishes between m and f.
هذا كتيب
هذه مدرستي
The word “and” is و. This word is used between all of the words in the list, unlike English. (e.g. book and table and house and car and pizza)
Plural
Arabic plurals, to put it mildly, all over the place. Masculine nouns have no pattern as to how to change them from singular to plural. Feminine nouns are a lot more forgiving, although there are still exceptions. Let’s take a look at a masculine noun and a feminine noun.
| Sing | Plu | |
| قلم | أقلام | Pen vs Pens |
| شنطة | شنطات | Bag vs Bags |
Finally, this brings me to my final point. A few weeks ago, I brought you the Arabic numbers. Here’s a recap. Pay attention to the right column this time.
| 1 | ١ | واهد | واهدة |
| 2 | ٢ | إثنان | إثنتان |
| 3 | ٣ | ثلاثة | ثلاث |
| 4 | ٤ | اربعة | أربع |
| 5 | ٥ | خمسة | خمس |
| 6 | ٦ | ستة | ست |
| 7 | ٧ | سبعة | سبع |
| 8 | ٨ | ثمانيا | ثمان |
| 9 | ٩ | تسعة | تسع |
| 10 | ١٠ | عشرة | عشر |
The difference lies in that the 3rd column is used with masculine nouns while the last with feminine nouns.
Anyways, that’s been all from me.
Cheers,
Tyler