Arabic

Bismillah.

Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) says:

Translation: Every time he entered Al-Mihrab to her, he found her supplied with sustenance. He said: “O Maryam (Mary)! From where have you got this?” She said, “This is from Allah. Verily, Allah provides sustenance to whom He wills, without measure.” At that time, Zakariya invoked his Lord, saying: “O my Lord! Grant me from You, a good offspring. You are indeed the All-Hearer of invocations.” [Surah Al-e-Imran, verse 37-38]

Bismillah.

Learning Arabic as a second language may be difficult for many, so I decided to share some tips that assist with learning the meanings of words and their structures.

Words that begin with ف usually will always mean something that breaks open, separates, or breaks apart. Check out these examples:

الفجر (Al-Fajr) from ف ج ر means the dawn, but it literally means when the daylight breaks/crack through the darkness. If you’ve ever seen the sky at Fajr time, you can see a thread of light near the horizon, while the rest of the sky is dark with the night. Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) tells us in Surah Baqarah to stop eating suhoor when the “white thread” is distinguishable from the “black thread.”

To give your recitation a quick boost, try ‘Itmaam-ul-Harakaat’. No, it’s not a medicine from Yemen. ‘Itmaam’ simply means completion & ‘harakaat’ could be loosely translated to mean vowels. It means fine-tuning the vowels. Unlike English, unitary vowels in Arabic are not letters – thus not written out explicitly. Instead, they are shown with either of the following 3 marks above or below a letter.

Fathah: straight stroke on top of a letter, pronounced like the ‘a’ as in “bat”. The common mistake is to pronounce it as the ‘a’ in “ball”, thus making it heavy. Bear in mind that heavy letters are only a minority (7 of 28), so for most cases pick up the “bat” and throw the “ball” away. Trust me on this.

Arabic has something called the “calling ya” in it. The closest thing we have in English is the “calling o”–as in “o my teacher” or “Oh God!” (As you can tell from the examples, we don’t use it much anymore these days–though, in Arabic, it’s quite common.)

The rules are quite simple–just like English, it’s “O so-and-so”. So for example, you could say “ya ummiy” (o my mother) or “ya taajiru” (o merchant). And, in fact, if you read the Qur’an at all, you’ll find these everywhere. The most common are:

There are three conjunctions you can use in Arabic (among others)–wa (and), thumma (then), and fa (which is difficult to translate, think of it as “and”). They are all used to group multiple items. What are the differences between these three?

Wa indicates grouping, but doesn’t specify order or timing. For example: Ahmed and Ghufran and Yusuf travelled to the masjid. It doesn’t indicate what order they arrived in, or anything about how long the people who came first waited for the people who came after then. It just groups them together.

The word kaana is the past-tense masculine singular third-person (he) form of the verb to-be. So you can translate it as “he was”. (And the khabr takes the same rules as with any other verb.)

So what does it mean when Allah (سبحانه وتعالى) uses kaana to describe Himself? For example, in surah Nisaa, He says:

Translation: And seek the Forgiveness of Allah; surely, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful [Surah Nisaa, 4:106]

In Arabic, default kind of sentence is called a nominal sentence. It looks something like this:

• Ahmad is rich
• The masjid is big
• I am a Muslim

It has two parts–the mubtada (the subject — eg. Ahmad), and the khabr (the predicate–information about the mubtada — eg. rich, big, a Muslim).

What are the rules of grammar as they apply to the mubtada and the khabr? There are three:

Laysa in Arabic means “not” (eg. that is not a pen). Unlike the other negations maa and laa, laysa is conjugated as a verb, depending on what you’re negating.

For example:

1. the duck is not big (al-battatu laysat kabiyratan)
2. the cat is not lazy (al-qittu laysa bi kaslaana)

Whenever you use laysa, the mubtada and khabr change: the mubtada becomes ismu laysa, and the khabr becomes khabru laysa.

Allah says in the Qur’an:

You might ask, why do rabb, Ar-Rahmaan, Ar-Raheem, and Maalik all have kasra on them? Why not dumma (the default), or fatha?

The answer is that, wallahu ‘alim, they are na’at (adjactives) for Allah–words that describe His greatness.

For example, Ar-Rahmaan means “the source of mercy” (that’s why, scholars say, you cannot name your son Rahman). Ar-Raheem is the one who shows mercy to the creation.

One question that plagues many new students of the Arabic language is the difference between hadhaa kitaabun and hadhaal kitaabu …

The difference is best demonstrated by example: hadhaa kitaabun kabiyrun means “this is a big book,” and “hadhaal kitaabul kabiyru” means “this big book …”

Get the difference? The first (hadhaa kitaabun) is talking about any book. “This is a book.” Nothing special. The second–hadhaal kitaabu–is talking about a specific book. It’s saying “this book … something.”