Arabic

For those of you studying al-lugatul arabiyyah, inshallah here is an easy visual way to learn six basic colours: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white. (You can set it as your computer desktop, so every time you pop onto your computer, instant practice!) The top colour is the mascline form, and the bottom colour is the feminine form. (Read more about Arabic word gender here.)

For those of you who regularly write Arabic (and, incidentally, you can generalize this to any language inshallah), you might look at your writing and say, “man, that is ugggggleeeeeee!” So how do you go about beautifying it? The key here is that you can recognize nice Arabic writing when you see it–and I don’t mean calligraphy. The solution is surprisingly simple. Grab a mushaf (or, if you have them, one of the three Medinah University Arabic books), Apply your observational skills, and you can easily inshallah detect a few clues on how to improve (or even how to write them!

In Arabic, masculine plurals generally follow a couple of different patterns. Sometimes they acquire a waw-noon at the end (eg. muslim becomes muslimuwna)–these are called “sound plurals” (because the original word is still intact). Some acquire letters inside their form (eg. qalam becomes aqlaam)–these are called “broken plurals”. Feminine words, Allahu ‘alim, they also have sound and broken forms. One example of a sound feminine plural is muslimaat (plural of muslimah).

When someone dies, we say “inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.” It means, roughly translated, “We belong to Allah and to Him we return.” Inshallah here, we’ll do a brief (grammatical) dissection of the phrase, so you can understand the words better (and not mix them up / mispronounce them). If you hover your mouse over underlined words, you’ll see the Arabic inshallah. Inna: Inna is really inna-na. The first part is “very”, the last part is “we”–but Arabs like to simplify, so they just write it as inna (with only two noons).

Want to learn Arabic–or for that matter, any language–quickly? Transcend beyond what you learn in class? Fly past your peers in terms of knowledge and understanding? Want to achieve all this without spending hours of time or hundreds of dollars? Well, the solution is here–and it’s already available to you! All you need is a pen, some paper, and a mushaf (copy of the Qur’an)–and, most importantly, your brain! Read Read and recite the Qur’an.

For those who have a little bit of understanding about the Arabic language, or wish to deepen their understanding, you may wish to venture into the ArabicGems blog. This blog covers different gems gleaned from the Qur’an based on the Arabic language. Subhanallah, it really helps you realize the miraculous nature of the Qur’an–how every phrase or even word articulates waves of meaning, and how translations don’t even begin to convey everything.

Arabic has specific grammar rules for ‘Aadad and Ma’duwd–the number and the counted. Note: These rules apply for numbers from three to ten. One and two are special-they count as adjectives, not numbers, because the form of the word implies the number. In English, we say “three cars”. Three is the number (‘adad), and cars is the counted (ma’duwd). What are the grammatical rules of ‘adad and ma’duwd? Similar to time modifiers, ‘adad and ma’duwd work like possessive case.

The Arabic language contains “time modifiers”–words like “before” and “after”. In Arabic, these are called Duruwf Zamaan, and grammatically, they act like the possessive case. While there are tons of these in Arabic, there are two you run into pretty often in the Qur’an and ahadith: ba’da (after) and qabla (before). Grammatically, the modifier comes before the thing it modifies–the same as in English. And since the modifier acts like the possessor in the possessive case, the modified receives kasra.

You’re already familiar with possessive case in English–when we show ownership of something. For example, we might say, “this is Amer’s book” or “this is the book of Amer.” The possessive case has two elements: The possessor, i.e. the one who owns the thing. In this case, Amer. The possessed, i.e. the thing being owned. In this example, the book. The possessive case in Arabic is the same. The possessed is called the mudaf, the possessor the mudaf ilayh.

Arabic is an integral part of Islam. After all, Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) revealed the Qur’an in Arabic, and all the ahadeeth of the Prophet (صلي الله عليه وسلم), not to mention the key works of early scholars, all are in Arabic. Many of us embark down the path to learn Arabic. But what elements do you need to succeed–aside from patience, persistence, practise, and a pure intention to seek only the pleasure of Allah (سبحانه وتعالى)?