Language Learning

In Arabic, connected pronouns can be attached to verbs, nouns, or prepositions. If attached to verbs, they can be a subject (the doer of the action) فَاعِل or an object (the receiver of the action) مَفْعُول. In this lesson, we look at the connected subject pronouns with regular perfective verbs الْفِعْلُ الْمَاضِي. In a previous lesson, we briefly looked at the common personal …

50 Common Arabic Regular Verbs 50 Common Arabic regular verbs are listed below. These verbs are regular (strong) because their root form does not change while adding pronominal suffixes or prefixes to them. Based on the letters they are composed of, verbs الْأَفْعَال in Arabic are classified into regular (strong) and irregular (weak). The regular are the verbs that do not incl…

Basic Word Formation in Arabic Word formation in Arabic is the process of creating new words by means of adding prefixes, suffixes, infixes, or changing the diacritical marks in the word roots. Take the Arabic word root كَتَبَ 'he wrote' which is a verb. By adding the prefix مَـ to it and changing the short vowels over the كـ and ـب, it becomes مَكْتَبٌ 'an office' which is a …

Sun and Moon Letters Arabic letters are classified into two categories: sun letters and moon letters. The definite article الْـ 'the' triggers this classification. The الْـ precedes indefinite nouns and adjectives (i.e., attached/prefixed to them). Basically, the لْـ in the الْـ assimilates to certain subsequent letters. These letters are called sun letters (also solar letters…

Difficult Arabic Sounds Difficult Arabic sounds are the sounds that are produced from the same area of articulation. They differ in one or two speech characteristics. Unless you get enough exposure to them and get sufficient and prolonged practice in pronouncing them in the early stages of our learning, it is inevitable that you would mispronounce them. That is, you would pron…

One characteristic of Arabic that makes its writing easy is that it is a phonetic language. That is, there is generally a one-to-one correspondence between the spoken form and the written form. In other words, there are no silent letters as is the case with English and French. This is especially true when writing isolated words. However, in writing natural connected speech, one…