Shariah Program
Shariah Program
,,
Map of the Arabic Language
Overview
Welcome to the second presentation of this free series of videos. Inshallah in this
presentation, towards the end of it, I am going to explain to you:
o the 4 stages of growth that you need to get through in order to successfully reach
your goal in understanding the Quran and being able to appreciate its miracle. Right now we
will tell you their names. So the 4 stages of growth are :
Start up
Initial growth
Rapid growth
Continuous growth
We will also tell you what kind of behavior is required from you in order to successfully move
from one stage to the next. But before that we are going to,
o quickly recap what was covered in the previous video and then
o teach you some actual content. Well go through the parts of speech in Arabic and
develop the word, the sentence and the phrase and we will leave some of it for the 3
rd
and
the 4
th
video.
So again we would suggest you don't take furious notes. There is no need for that because
all of the content is being provided to you in numerous formats. The whole point of giving it
to you in the video is so you can download the video eventually, after you have watched it
once. The download link should appear underneath this video once you come back to the
page and then you can watch it more than once.
This is how learning happens and this is how I do it. Because this is all core theory and by far
the most important aspects of the language that you need to know in order to begin any
reading. So it is worth listening to and watching more than once.
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So with that said you don't have to take any notes. There is also the transcript and there is
also the 45 page report. So when you come back to all of these resources you will know it
very well.
Also, this kind of material, is the type of material you actually need to over learn. So there is
going to be some overlap in what I am presenting today and what is in the 45 page
document.
I have thought about this that there might be some people who don't like overlap but I think
the vast majority of people really appreciate it when the same concept is introduced more
that once in different styles and different ways using difference analogies. It really helps to
solidify and it helps to get you to a level where you are at unconscious competence , which is
the final stage amongst the 4 stages of learning.
4 stages of learning
The example I will give in order to explain these stages is that of driving. Before you ever
learn to drive or before you took a lesson with an instructor you had no idea what a clutch
was, and this is how you put it in gear and this is how you park and signal and turn. So you
didn't even know what those things were necessarily. That was unconscious incompetence.
Once you started taking lessons at that point you were taught all of these things , these
elements that are required in order to drive properly. This was conscious incompetence.
Then eventually when you got your license and you drove for some time you became
consciously competent and then eventually unconsciously competent, that you drive and
do many other things and still have no problem with driving. But the same people who are
unconsciously competent while driving, have to turn the radio off when they are parallel
parking or tell the people to be quiet because they need to concentrate since they haven't
reached that level of unconscious competence when it comes to parallel parking. So to
summarize briefly the 4 stages are:
1) Unconscious incompetence - this is where you don't even know what you don't
know. Ex: don't know about clutch, signaling, turning.
2) Conscious incompetence - where you know what you don't know. Ex: you learn
about elements of driving.
3) Conscious competence Ex: when you can drive with concentration and effort.
4) Unconscious competence - Ex: can drive without much thinking, but will need to
concentrate for some things.
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So if you want to read books in Arabic like tafseer of Imam Al-Aloosi or one of the books by
Imam Ibn Taimiyyah and Imam Al-Ghazali and you want to lie in your bed and read 100
pages without being overwhelmed at all then you have to reach this level of Unconscious
incompetence. As I mentioned in the previous video that majority of meanings in Arabic do
not come from words but they come from vowels. But when you open up the books the
vowels aren't there so how does that make any sense? So you need to get to that level,
where you can read unvoweled texts without much thinking.
The other example I like to give is typing. People who have reached that level of Unconscious
competence In typing, they can type very fast without having to look at the keyboard and
with making very few mistakes. So this is what we want for you when it comes to the study
of Arabic that you can read the books by the scholars and be reasonably confident. Not
making a mistake and you can read quickly and as easily as you read books in English.
Recap
So let us quickly recap the Big mistake. When most people approach the study of Arabic they
start with simple structures and they gradually try to reach the advance. What they are
doing really is they are taking a complex and sophisticated system and breaking it up into
small little portions and trying to tackle each one with slight improvements in every area and
this will never work. This is not how it is done.
Within the Arabic language there is an inherent simplicity and what we need to do and it to
identify that and we need to learn that first. And what it is, is theory. It is basically the
mechanism of how the meanings are conveyed. And I am not talking about the vocabulary. I
am talking about the non-word meanings. Because what looks like a single word in Arabic
can often convey seven meanings. And this was presented to you in previous video.
So when you understand the non-word meanings, the overall framework of how the
language works, at that point you have the inherent simplicity. It is not very complicated. It
could be done in a span of a few short days and this is what we are doing in these free series
of videos. So simple to the complex approach is the big mistake and this is what causes
majority of the frustration. This IS why people abandon textbooks and move to another
series of textbooks and they move form teacher to teacher and they get no traction and no
blessings.
Our approach to studying Arabic is to start with the Big Picture first. The human
emotions and facial expressions analogy that I will give to you later in the video. And the big
picture really is the 4% of the language that gives you over half of all of your benefits
presented as a big picture. It focuses on the aspects that have the broadest applications. The
fundamentals of the language that you would expect to encounter in practically every
sentence.
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The 80/20 principle is prevalent not only in our facets of life, but in nature and in human
behaviors and it is everywhere you look. 20% of people account for 80% of crime. 20% of
people are holding 80% of wealth. 20% of you name it will be responsible for 80% of
whatever the causes that it produces and Arabic language is no different. Within the Arabic
language, there is a small amount of rules that if you know them you will get 80% of all of
your benefits. When you go more dense into this 20% there is also an even denser inner
core which is what we are teaching right now. The 4% of the language that gives you over
half of all your benefits.
Why do we do all of this?
We do this with one purpose in mind and that is, we can start reading text as soon as
possible. This is extremely important because the minute we begin, several things happen.
First of all, all the grammar comes to life. So the theory you are learning is with the purpose
of implementing it as soon as possible. Within this you are reading an actual book in Arabic
and every word, every sentence and every phrase in that book becomes an example of what
was taught earlier. So when you see the repeated application of it then your initial
understanding of the theory gets stronger and stronger. Because with every subsequent
application of the principle your understanding of it cannot decrease. It can only get more
clear and it can only increase.
The enthusiasm level of the student goes through the roof because you are getting the
payoff straight away. You don't have to wait to get the pay off.
This is what we do. So in the first few days we are giving the Big Picture of how the language
works. Immediately with the intention of following up with the reading text. The minute the
book begins the enthusiasm of the students goes above the roof and all of that theory that
was taught earlier now comes to life with real examples from the Qur'an.
Science of Arabic Grammar
So there are two sciences that we start with and there is a third science which we
introduce a little later and those two sciences are " =
= and
"
o =
= (morphology)
So, ,
. .
Patterns of vowelization and non-base letters that convey tense, voice and added
connotations
So in one sentence this is exactly what we were highlighting in that above example. There
was one meaning that was coming from the actual consonants and you get that meaning
from the dictionary. Other 6 meanings do not come from the dictionary. They come from
knowing ,
. .
So obviously you can see how important this is. It makes up 30% of total comprehension.
This is the science that the scholars have always attached importance to. It comes in the
biography of Imam Nawawi who was one of the greatest scholars of this Ummah. He used to
split up his day into 12 portions and he used to spend time studying 12 different sciences
with his various teachers. Amongst those sciences was Sahih Muslim and amongst those
sciences was Al-Muhazzab (book of Shahfi Fiqh). He was studying tafseer and hadith and
one of the sciences he was studying was the science of Arabic morphology which is the same
science we highlighted to you in the previous video, explained in the 45 page report and our
3
rd
presentation is going to be pure ,
. also talks about the designated endings that convey gender, plurality and
person of the one doing the verb
So you know the one doing the verb is a male or female. The one doing the verb is one or
more than one or you are talking to them or you are talking about them or are you yourself
are the one doing the verb. That all comes from the endings. So depending on what letter
you put at the end you will know the one doing the verb.
So in the ,
.
Like if I put a , . , at the end and I say .
. is the science that deals with this. So two things patterns and endings, just
remember that. So everything to do with patterns and everything to do with endings and
when I say endings I am talking about endings of verbs specifically. The last letter that comes
at the end of verb, the purpose of that is to give the gender the plurality and the person of
the one doing the verb. So ,
(grammar)
Words, sentences and phrases
It is when you take the words and combine them together. When people speak they
don't speak in single words. It is not all you do. There are other elements that are required in
order to speak because when people speak they don't speak in single words they speak in
sentences and sentences are made up of words and phrases. So how to connect the words
to make meaningful sentences? What are the sanctioned methods of connecting words
together?
Remember in the previous video we said that majority of meanings in Arabic do not come
from words. They come from vowels, they come from patterns and they come from
grammatical structures. So patterns are discussed in ,
..
When I say vowels I am talking about single vowels (keep that at the back of your mind, we
are going to return back to it later). So by the change of single vowel you will introduce more
meaning. This is the subject matter of grammar. It will tell you what kind of single vowel
change will result in what meaning. So it is all about words, sentences and phrases.
Here is a working definition of grammar (There is a more precise definition but we will give
you that at a more later stage) :
Grammar is a science of classical Arabic that teaches you how to arrange words to
make meaningful sentences in ways that are sanctioned by the language
So sometimes when you take two words together and connect them the result is a phrase
and sometimes when you take two words together and connect then the result is a full
sentence. So words, sentences and phrases is the subject matter of grammar.
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To give you a better understanding of this let us go ahead and map the language for you. We
will start with the most basic and we will end up with the 3 things that I just listed for you
words, sentences and phrases.
Map of the Arabic language
,utterance,
_,
,meaningless) ,meaningful,
.
`
(compound) Single (word)
,
~ / ,
non-beneficial (phrase) beneficial (sentence)
the most basic sound that comes out of a human mouth. Regardless of whether it is
meaningful or meaningless. Any sound, just a random noise. For example: Pepsi. Before the
advent of this now famous beverage if anyone spoke that word Pepsi, it would have been
meaningless, but it is still an utterance. So anything that comes out of the human mouth.
_,
- this word means coined. It underwent a process where the earliest natives of that
language took that particular sound of syllable configuration and assigned it a meaning. So
this particular object whenever we want to call it we will call it a tree. So the word tree is
an example of a meaningful utterance.
meaningless utterance. Obviously we are not going to talk about it. We are just
listing it for classification purposes.
meaningful utterance which is compound. Two or more words. Not like a grocery list.
You don't take two or more words and line them up side by side. They have to be arranged in
a way that is sanctioned by the language. This could result in a full sentence or it can result
in less than a full sentence.
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~ / ,
.
presentation and then we will get back to grammar and in the 4
th
presentation we will give
you a lot about how the nouns are used. The multiple ways a noun can be used in a
sentence.
And all of these topics, that are being taught here are also in the 45 page document. So I will
strongly suggest that you print that out and read that document and don't worry about the
overlap. Because what you want here is to reach the level of unconscious competence and in
order to do that you have to over-learn. So let's move forward with developing the word.
Parts of Speech
In English when we talk about parts of speech we talk about nouns, pronouns, verbs
and adverbs. So most people are familiar with those terms. What is a noun, what is a
pronoun, what is an adjective and I will also remind you what they are here, in case you
need a refresher.
So now we have 3 parts of speech in Arabic and I can go ahead and list for you 3 parts of
speech, what are their names and I can go ahead and list some examples. That would be an
inferior approach. You are very likely to forget it if I do it in that way. So what I will do is I will
tell you what they are but I won't define them. Not yet. But instead I will spend time on the
English parts of speech. They are more, they are 8 or so in English as opposed to the 3 we
have in Arabic. I will then take those 8 and I will assign them to the ones we have in Arabic
and this will give a very clear understanding of what the parts of speech are in a way that
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you will never forget them and after I have done all of that then I will go ahead and define
them one by one. So let us proceed with this.
So these are the 3 parts of speech in Arabic:
Let us now talk about the parts of speech in English and then we will come back to these.
Parts of speech in English:
1) Noun an entity like a place, person or a thing
2) Pronouns smaller words used to refer to nouns when the nouns have already been
mentioned. Ex: Zaid came in the house, then He went to the kitchen. so Zaid is used once
but every subsequent mention of Zaid after that is referred to by pronoun He. There are
first, second and third person pronouns like he, they, she, you, I, we.
3) Adjective a word which is used to modify a noun. Eg: small, big, lazy, happy. So
when you say man, it is applicable to millions of people. Every man will be included when
you say man, but when you say tall man then you have removed a certain percentage of
men that are below a height that you have determined to be above average. So this is what
we mean by modifying.
4) Adverb it modifies other than noun. So for example it will modify the verb came
when you say came quickly. So quickly is an adverb. Or it can modify another adjective,
eg: a person is very tall. So the word very is an adverb modifying an adjective tall.
Because even in tall we have various degrees so if you want to narrow down further then
you will use an adverb. So the first modification happens with an adjective and the next
modification happens with an adverb. It can also modify other adverbs eg: came very
quickly. So adverb quickly is modifying came and adverb very is modifying quickly.
5) Verb Action + tense (past, present, future)
6) Preposition small part of speech eg: in, on, to, from. They are generally
brought to express attributes of the upcoming word that otherwise cannot be understood.
So you say I traveled and then you want to mention the origin of the travel and then you
want to mention the destination of the travel. So you cannot say I travel Basra Kufa,
because then that could mean you took a tour. That is not the intended meaning. The
intended meaning is that the travel initiated in Basra and it culminated on Kufa. So you will
say I traveled from Basra to Kufa. So the prepositions from and to brought out the
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attribute of the upcoming word, in other words to be an origin and destination, that would
otherwise not be understood.
7) Conjunction small words like and, or, nor, but. The purpose is to allow
abbreviation, so you don't have to repeat yourself more than once. Eg: Zaid and Amr came.
You can just mention the conjunction and to connect the two nouns together because the
two nouns are in the same role and together they are forming the subject of the verb
came.
8) Article eg: the which is a definite article, a which is an indefinite article. This is
self explanatory.
So we have these 8 parts of speech in English and in order to understand the 3 parts of
speech we have in Arabic, we will assign these English parts of speech to the Arabic ones.
o ,
- ,
, ,
.
Okay so now let us go ahead and give precise definitions of these 3 parts of speech. So in
order to do this you will have to look at the commonalities between the 8 that were
assigned above.
So if you look at the bottom 3 preposition, conjunction, article all of them have the
commonality that they all express meaning in something else as opposed to having a
meaning in itself and this is what characterizes a
-.
So if they ask you what is the definition of from. You will say from is a preposition that
indicates on origin. So is it the from that is the origin or is it the upcoming word that is the
origin? Obviously it is the upcoming word. So from indicated a meaning in something else.
As opposed to if I say tree I am talking about the object itself that has the trunk and the
branches and the leaves. So it is the tree that is the tree but it is not from that is the
origin.
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A second example is and. It is a conjunction that indicates on gathering. So is it the and
that is gathered or is it the words on the two sides of and that are gathered together in a
single ruling? So obviously it is Zaid and Amr that are gathered with the and. So this is a
meaning in something else. And the indicates on specificity, a indicates on generality.
Now that means that the other two parts of speech -
, ,
indicate on a
meaning in themselves and the difference between them is that the
is linked to time
and
Now we take the three parts of speech and we sub-classify them. So we take the ,
because it is very broad, it includes noun, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs and if you look
at the reality of the noun and compare it to the reality of adverb then they are not the same.
There is a big difference between a noun and an adverb to the point that the English people
chose to keep them separate. In Arabic they have been clumped together and you have seen
them together, so now it is only appropriate that you see them separate and this will be
done through sub-classification method. I am going to leave that here. In our Premium
Program we do this quiet a bit and we give you additional vocabulary that will then be used
when the reading book begins so you can draw on the concepts.
Classification of the
So
is the verb and in English there are only three kinds of verbs:
o _
- - past tense verb, where the action has already occurred. Also called the
perfect verb. Eg:
(wrote).
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o g _=
- - This one indicates on both the present and the future tense. Means either
the action is ongoing or yet to begin. Also called the imperfect verb. Eg :
, (helps/will
help). The context would distinguish whether to use the present tense meaning or the future
tense meaning.
o
( drink! )
If you look at Arabic verb
,
has the at the front so that is how you would know which one is which. And then there
are other methods.
It is like typing like I said you have to reach that level of unconscious competence in order to
properly be able to appreciate this. Right now it might be a little fuzzy -- how are these
things figured out but at any rate the purpose here is to classify the verb into 3 categories.
We have the perfect, the imperfect and the command.
Classification of =
_ (he)
o .
(him)
o
- (his)
If you can understand the difference between he, him and his you have a 60-70%
understanding of what
- , .
, _
_ are.
So what are he, him and his ? This is the same meaning being conveyed in 3 different
ways in English. So when you are referring to a male in 3
rd
person you have a choice you can
use either one of these. But it is not really a choice because you have to use the right one at
the right time. So when the pronoun is intended to be a subject of a verb you would say he
came. When the pronoun is intended to be the object of the verb you say I saw him.
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When a pronoun is intended to be used in a possessive structure you say his pen or the
pen is his.
In English this only happens in a pronoun. If I was using a noun in different ways I wouldn't
change the noun it would be the same noun. I would say the house fell, I entered the
house, door of the house. But in Arabic what would happen is the word house would
actually change and the change wouldn't be the whole word. It would only be the last letter
= ,
= ,
=
Example Translation
Role of .
in
the sentence
Grammatical
state of .
Reflection
,| =
=
The house fell down subject
_
_ , , -
,|
.
I entered the house object
.
, , -
,|
,
door of the house possessive
- , ,
So this is the process and this is based on need and necessity and let me elaborate a little
more on that and then we are done with this presentation.
Remember in the previous videos when you have a verb and two nouns. Every language
needs to tackle this problem, which of the nouns is doing the verb and which is the noun
upon whom the verb is being done?
Some languages do it through extra words. Like in Urdu if you want to day Zaid hit Amr,
you will say Zaid nay Amr kow mara. So the purpose of nay is to tell you which is the
noun that is doing the verb and the purpose of kow is to tell you which noun is the one
upon whom the verb is being done and you will have the verb at the end mara. You need 5
words to convey that meaning.
In English it is done by sequence : subject verb object. Noun at front is automatically the
subject and the noun at end is automatically the object and if you switch it around the
meaning changes to Amr hit Zaid.
In Arabic the sequence is flexible so the verb and the 2 nouns can be arranged in 6 different
ways. It will be the particular vowel at the end of the noun which will tell you which noun is
the subject and which noun is the object and the arrangement will not matter.
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So we say:
More on this in the 4
th
presentation and if you want more now then you can go ahead and
access the 45 page document because I have elaborated on this in quiet some depth.
That is pretty much what it means to govern and what it means to not govern. In the case of
a
- and
is a
-. If you look at
(he helped)
with the (he did not help) . So the it obviously indicated on a meaning in
. The fact
that the action did not happen. So negation is the meaning that is coming from . And
indicates on containment, so something is happening in the house. But the point to illustrate
here is that is not changing the way the upcoming word is looking, because
was
prior to the entry of and is still
because when
you take away the
is sort of
flexible.
It is like the human face that could be smiling or it could be frowning. But that is not true for
. Right? Because did not induce any change on it. So therefore is not a governing
agent where as