Arabic Numbers

٠ 0 sifr ‫صفر‬ ١ 1 wahid ‫واحد‬

2 ithnan ‫إثنان‬ 3 thalatha (th as in ‫ثالثة‬
٢ ٣ bath)
٤ 4 arba’a ‫أربعة‬ ٥ 5 khamsa ‫خمسة‬
٦ 6 sitta ‫ستة‬ ٧ 7 sab’a ‫سبعة‬
٨ 8 thamaniya (th in thin) ‫ثمانية‬ ٩ 9 tis’a ‫تسعة‬
١٠ 10 ‘ashra ‫عشرة‬ ١١ 11 ahada ‘ashar ‫إحدى عشر‬
١٢ 12 ithna ‘ashar ‫إثنا عشر‬ ١٣ 13 thalatha ‘ashar ‫ثالثة عشر‬
١٤ 14 arba’a ‘ashar ‫أربعة عشر‬ ١٥ 15 khamsa ‘ashar ‫خمسة عشر‬
١٦ 16 sitta ‘ashar ‫ستة عشر‬ ١٧ 17 sab’a ‘ashar ‫سبعة عشر‬
١٨ 18 thamaniya ‘ashar ‫ثمانية عشر‬ ١٩ 19 tis’a ‘ashar ‫تسعة عشر‬
٢٠ 20 ‘ishrun ‫عشرون‬ ٢١ 21 wahed wa-’ishrun ‫واحد و عشرون‬
٢٢ 22 ithnane wa-’ishrun ‫إثنان وعشرون‬ ٢٣ 23 thalatha wa-’ishrun ‫ثالثة و عشرون‬
24 arba’a wa-’ishrun ‫أربعة و عشرون‬ 25 khamsa wa-’ishrun ‫خمسة و‬
٢٤ ٢٥ ‫عشرون‬
٢٦ 26 sitta wa-’ishrun ‫ستة و عشرون‬ ٢٧ 27 sab’a wa-’ishrun ‫سبعة وعشرون‬
28 thamaniya wa-’ishrun ‫ثمانية و عشرون‬ 29 tis’a wa-’ishrun ‫تسعة و‬
٢٨ ٢٩ ‫عشرون‬
٣٠ 30 thalathun ‫ثالثون‬ ٣١ 31 wahid wa-thalathun ‫واحد و ثالثون‬
٤٠ 40 arba’un ‫أربعون‬ ٤٢ 42 ithnan wa-arba’un ‫إثنان و أربعون‬
٥٠ 50 khamsun ‫خمسون‬ ٥٣ 53 thalatha wa-khamsun ‫ثالثة و خمسون‬
٦٠ 60 sittun ‫ستون‬ ٦٤ 64 arba'a wa-sittun ‫أربعة و ستون‬
70 sab’un ‫سبعون‬ 75 khamsa wa-sab’un ‫خمسة و‬
٧٠ ٧٥ ‫سبعون‬
٨٠ 80 thamanun ‫ثمانون‬ ٨٦ 86 sitta wa-thamanun ‫ستة و ثمانون‬
٩٠ 90 tis’un ‫تسعون‬ ٩٧ 97 sab'a wa-tis’un ‫سبعة و تسعون‬
100 mi'a ‫مائة‬ ١٠٠ 1000 alf ‫ألف‬
١٠٠ ٠
100000 mi'at alf ‫مائة ألف‬ ٢٠٠ 2000 alfain ‫ألفين‬
١٠٠٠٠٠ ٠
١٠٠٠٠٠٠ 10000000 Million ‫مليون‬
٠

Forming numbers in Arabic is quite easy, from 13 to 19 you just place a number before
ten for example 13 = three ten, instead of thirteen in English, 17 is seven ten in Arabic.
From 21 to 99 you just need to reverse the numbers and add (wa- between the two
numbers) 36 would be six wa- thirty instead of thirty six (sitta wa-thalathun), (wa means
and).
 0 is sifr in Arabic, from which the word cipher came. For 11 and 12 they’re irregular, so
just remember how to write them by now (11 = ehda ‘ashar, 12 = ithna ‘ashar).

So in general, numbers standing alone are easy to use, or say. The hard part is that
numbers 3 to 10 have a unique rule of agreement with nouns known as polarity: A
numeral in masculine gender should agree with a feminine referrer and vice versa
(thalathatu awlaad = three boys), boys are masculine plural, so the feminine form of
number 3 should be used (which is thalathatu, and not thalathu which is the masculine
form, the u at the end of numbers is used when a number is followed by another word to
make an easy jump to the next word) (thalathu banaat = three girls) banaat = girls, which
is feminine plural, therefore a masculine form of number 3 should be used (thalathu).
That may sound complicated but once you get used to it, it will not be as hard as it seems
now, besides most Arab natives make mistakes or simply don’t care about matching the
gender and the number.

Many people wonder if there is a way or method that could help them learn Arabic, this website
includes a lot of resources but without a good learning strategy a person could be lost. So I will
try to point out to some important ways to start learning Arabic, however a person should rely
on ones creativity based on each person’s needs because not everyone is interested in the same
thing, some want to focus on writing or reading Arabic, some would like to focus on speaking
and pronunciation. I will start with methods taking into consideration the general needs of most
people based on learning Arabic as a whole (reading, writing, speaking …).
An obvious good start is to learn the Arabic Alphabet this page will help you not only to learn
how to pronounce the letters but also how to write them. Also check the Arabic Vowels since it’s
related to the alphabet too. Once you’re familiar with the Arabic letters you can check out the
Phrases in Arabic, that will give you an idea about some expressions that are used daily, try to
use some of those expressions and also memorize them, like “thank you – shokran”, “my name
is … esmee …”. Memorizing words can be very useful, because that’s basically the raw material
of the language, without them you can’t even start, so it would be a good idea to make a list of
your favorite words that you want to memorize for example 200 words, you can go and choose
them from the following pages: Food and House (like apple, bread …), Animals (cat, dog …),
Adjectives (white, green …), Body Parts (face, cheek …), Occupations & School (engineer,
book…), Places & Sports (Morocco, beach …), Time & Weather (Sunny, everyday …), Verbs in
their infinitive form. You will certainly be able to make a list of 200 favorite words from these
pages.

If you're interested in having your name written in Arabic calligraphy, there are two ways in
doing it, either ask our calligraphers to write your name in Arabic for you, or by trying to use our
calligraphy tips and help to write your name yourself. The first option is safer, more accurate,
allows you to choose more options and is more artistic and decorative, because it's performed
by human calligraphers trained on the Islamic art and Arabesque designs. By choosing the
second option you will be able to discover and learn how to write a name yourself in Arabic,
although there is a chance you will make a mistake, at least it will be a learning experience and
also it's free. 
Either way you choose we hope you experience and enjoy the beauty of the Arabic calligraphy.
Below you can benefit from artistic services performed by our calligraphers, once you submit a
calligraphy request form, it takes less than 24 hours to receive the work you requested back via
E-mail, to proceed you need to choose the style you prefer, the background (optional), and the
size (optional), we charge 4.99 $ for each calligraphy work performed, that's the lowest price in
the market we know about. We accept many methods of payment such as PayPal, (Visa, Master
Card, American Express, and Discover) via Paypal, for other methods of payment please contact
us by filling out the form below.
Once you click on Add to Cart below you will be able to add the style you like to the cart, then
log in to your Paypal account or use your credit card, and then add your notes including your
name, or the words you want to have translated and written in calligraphy, also include your e-
mail with the note.

If you're interested in knowing how an English name or word looks like in Arabic translation
then check out the links below, each link will take you to either names or words ...
For names in Arabic check first here: (Names in Arabic). Also Check (Phrases in Arabic) if
you’re looking for common English Arabic expressions. You can also check words (adjectives,
nouns, verbs…) from our Arabic vocabulary lists which can be found on the Main Menu. . You
can try also to write your name by yourself, check this page out it helps you write in Arabic
calligraphy

The Arabic alphabet is written and read from right to left and horizontally. There are 28
letters in the Arabic alphabet, first let’s watch the video below:

Now examine the table below

As you may have noticed, some of the letters in Arabic don’t exist in English and vice
versa. We will first go through the letters that exist in English, the table below shows the
letters that you may not have any problem learning or pronouncing:
Now we will go through the Arabic letters that are either hard to pronounce or are
pronounced a little bit differently, you shouldn’t worry if you can’t pronounce them the
right way, because there are always close pronunciations in Arabic, and you still can be
understood.

Reading Arabic:

Now that you know how to pronounce the Arabic letters, we will go through reading
them, Arabic letters should be written connected to each other, you can simply think of it
as if you’re writing in cursive in English, like in the example below you can see how the
first WELCOME is written, then the second WELCOME which has all letters connected
to each other, Unlike English, Arabic in most cases cannot be written with its letters
separated from each other like the way we wrote the word WELCOME. Most letters
should be connected like the way the second Welcome is written. There are some
exceptions which we will go through in this lesson.

To read Arabic you should know that the Arabic alphabet letters have up to 3 forms, each
letter takes a form depending on its position in the word, look at the example below and
you will notice that a letter has a form at the beginning of the word, in the middle of the
word and at the end of the word, some letters however can keep the same form in one or
two positions. Compare the m in the two examples below, the M of come has a longer tail
than the M of the room because of the position of m, the same thing happens in Arabic.
The form that a letter takes depends on its position in a given word, and the difference
most of the time is very small, like a longer tail to allow it connect with another letter
following it.

The table below shows the three forms that a letter can take, a letter in a blue font shows
a letter starting a word, the red font shows a letter in the middle of the word, and the
black font shows a letter at the end of the word, as you may have noticed, there is no big
different between the three forms.
Just a tip for you: most of the time the letter at the end looks exactly like the letter when
it’s alone.

Arabic Alphabet List:

**: letters having stars next to them can only connect with other letters placed before
them and not after, which means that if a letter is placed after them, that letter should take
a form as if it was placed in the beginning of the word.
Note also that the letters I marked with stars in the table above never connect with other
letters marked with stars either before or after.
So you have to be careful with these starred letters, because sometimes they may make
you think that they’re the last letter of a word because they have that form of an ending
letter, while in the reality they may not be the last letter of the word. The table below may
explain it better:

Arabic reading
‫ أدرس بجامعة‬,‫ سنة‬20 ‫ أبلغ من العمر‬,‫ أعيش في مصر‬,‫ا إسمي فاطمة‬
‫ أذهب مع أصدقائي لزيارة األهرامات مرة في‬,‫ أحب بلدي كثيرا‬,‫القاهرة‬
‫ أحب أيضا المشي بجانب نهر النيل حيث النسيم المنعش و المنظر‬,‫الشهر‬
‫الخالب‬.
‫ الناس‬,‫ زرت مرة المغرب و أعجبني كثيرا‬,‫أحب السفر و زيارة الدول األخرى‬
.‫ إستمتعت باألكالت المغربية مثل الكسكس و غيرها‬,‫هناك كرماء و لطفاء‬
,‫ بلد رائع حقا! أمضيت يوما كامال أستمتع بمناظر البتراء‬,‫أيضا زرت األردن‬
‫ حيث‬,‫ زيارتي المقبلة سوف تكون لإلسبانيا‬... ‫منازل منحوثة على الصخر‬
‫ أنا مشتاقة حقا‬,‫ بنقوشها الفنية الجميلة‬,‫أرغب بزيارة ساحة الحمراء باألندلس‬
‫لتلك الرحلة‬.
Ana esmee Fatimah, e'eeshu fe misr, ablughu menal umr 20 sanah,
adrusu bejaame’at al qahira, ohibbu baladi katheeran, ath-habu ma’a
asdiqa’i lezeyarat al ahramaat maratan fe shahr, ohibbu aidan al mashy
bejaneb nahr aneel haithu annaseem al mun’esh wa almandar al khallaab.
Ohibbu asafara wa zeyarat adduwal al ukhra, zurtu maratan al maghrib
wa a’jabanee katheeran, annasu hunaaka kuramaa’ wa lutafaa’, estamta’tu
be akalaat al maghribiah methl al couscous wa ghaireha. Aidan zurtu al
ordun, baladun ra’i’ haqqan! Amdaitu yawman kamelan astamti’u
bemenader al batraa’, manazel manhutah ala assakhr … zeyarati al
muqbilah sawfa takunu le Espania, haithu arghabu bezeyarat sahat al
hamraa’ bel andalus, benuqoushiha aljamila, ana mushtaqatun letelka
arehla.
My name is Fatimah, I live in Egypt, I’m 20 years old, I study in
Cairo university, I love my country a lot, I go with my friends and visit the
pyramids once a month, I also enjoy walking by the Nile river where the
fresh breeze and the awesome sight.
I love traveling and visiting other countries, I visited Morocco once and I
liked it a lot, people there are generous and kind, I enjoyed Moroccan
dishes like Couscous and others. Also I visited Jordan, a wonderful country
indeed! I spend a whole day enjoying the scenery of Petra, houses carved
from rocks… My next visit will be to Spain, where I want to visit the
Alhambra in Andalusia, with its beautiful artistic arabesque. I’m excited
about that trip.

Learning how to read Arabic characters and how to pronounce it will make it very easy
for you to learn the language, and avoid counting on transliterations that are not really
reliable

How to Install Arabic on your Computer

If you are a new learner who just want to experience or get comfortable with an Arabic
keyboard, either use Arabic Keyboard, because it's ready to use and has some friendly
buttons and translations. If you are an Arabic native or reached a level where you can
type in Arabic without a problem then you might want to install Arabic on your
computer.

To set up Arabic under Windows XP, select Start | Settings | Control Panel | Regional
and Language Options. Click the Languages tab at the top; check the box which allows
you to "Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages (including Thai)”,
Apply, then click on Details... under Text services and input languages. When the
window appears, click Add... next to Installed services and select Arabic (Egypt) and
Arabic (101) as your Keyboard layout/IME. Click OK, Apply, Ok and you're done.

To set up Arabic under Windows Vista, select Start (or windows logo) | Settings |
Control Panel | Regional and Language Options. Choose "Keyboards and
Languages" at the top, click on the button "Change Keyboards", then "Add", scroll to
where Arabic is, you might want to choose "Arabic (Egypt)" for example, make sure
you click on the + icon before the word "Arabic (Egypt)”, once you do, you will see
"keyboard" click on the + icon placed before it. Check the box for “Arabic (101)”. Click
"Ok", then "Apply" and finally "Ok", and that's it.

Tips you need to know

Once Arabic is installed, you will be able to type messages in Arabic or in English, to do
so let's say you were typing an e-mail in English and you decided to type the rest in
Arabic, just press and hold "Shift" button on your keyboard and press "Alt", and that will
switch to "Ar", then you can do the same thing again (Shift + Alt) to swtich back to
English. Good luck!

This is an Arabic keyboad that you can use to type in Arabic if you don't have it installed
on your computer, or if you don't have the Arabic letters (stickers) on your keyboard.
You can type any character. Also you will be able to edit what you write by placing the
mouse pointer inside the text area and using it as you normally do to type and edit texts.
It might be useful for writing names or small words for Arabic beginner students,
especially if you know how it's written already.
Note that there are shortcuts that save you time, for example "Greeting" or "Goodbye"
expressions... etc. For those who don't speak or understand Arabic, below each shortcut
button in Arabic there is a translation in English you can click on them anytime to see
what the full translation is, Once you finish typing the text in Arabic just click on Select
All, and then Copy and Paste it where you want, such as where you compose your e-
mails, or on your messenger when chatting... Good luck!

Virtual Arabic Keyboard/ ‫لوحة مفاتيح عربية‬

This Arabic test contains 20 questions of multiple choices, it shouldn't take you more
than 10 minutes to finish, make sure you're relaxed before starting this Arabic quiz.
If you notice that the Arabic script is not displayed properly then please change the
encoding:
If you have Mozilla Browser then follow these steps: go to the top and click on
"view", then "character encoding", and finally choose "Unicode".
If you have Internet explorer: usually you shouldn't have a problem, but if you do
then go to "view", "encoding" then "unicode".

lets begin our lesson.

‫ ا‬- Alif ( Letter A )

‫ ب‬- Ba ( Letter B )
‫ ت‬- Ta ( Letter T )
‫ ث‬- Tsa ( Letter S )
‫ ج‬- Jim ( Letter J or G )
‫ ح‬- Ha ( Letter H )
‫ خ‬- Khaw ( Letter Kh or H )
‫ د‬- Dal ( Letter D )
‫ ذ‬- Dzal ( Letter Z or Dh )
‫ ر‬- Ra ( Letter R )
‫ ز‬- Zai ( Letter Z )
‫ س‬- Sin ( Letter S )
‫ ش‬- Shin ( Letter S or Sh )
‫ ص‬- Sod ( Letter S )
‫ ض‬- Dod ( Letter D )
‫ ط‬- Taw ( Letter T )
‫ ظ‬- Zaw ( Letter Z )
‫ ع‬- Ayn ( Letter - no equivalent )
‫ غ‬- Gayn ( Letter G or Gh )
‫ ف‬- Fa ( Letter F )
‫ ق‬- Kof ( Letter K or Q )
‫ ك‬- Kaf ( Letter K )
‫ ل‬- Lam ( Letter L )
‫ م‬- Mim ( Letter M )
‫ ن‬- Nun ( Letter N )
‫ ه‬- Ha ( Letter H )
‫ و‬- Waw ( Letter W or U )
‫ ي‬- Ya ( Letter Y or I )

So I guess if you notice there are several equivalents to letters S, K, D, T, H and G. Well
I do not know how to explain this in detail but if you notice Chinese characters, they may
sound the same unless you add the intonation. And different intonation could mean
different thing like the character 妈 - mā which means mother, 麻 - má which means hemp
or 马 - mǎ which means horse. It’s the same for Arabic letters. The good thing is that you
can use Arabic letters to spell out English words as long there is an equivalent letter like
the word Automobile, in Arabic it’s spelt out as ‫ اوتوموبيل‬or Utumubil. For Radio it
would be ‫ راديو‬and its pronounced as it is. Of course you can spell out English
vulgarities too but I’m not going into that.

So I would be writing my Malay entries in Jawi, if I’ve the time anyway. Perhaps I’m just
being a bit too ambitious. Who the hell reads Jawi nowadays anyway unless you live
in Brunei. But you know what? I’ll still do it anyway. Now if only Macbook comes with
Arabic character keypads just like my HP laptop does. I’ve called Macbook service
centre and they said it’s possible to customize the keypads but to have Arabic characters,
they might have to import it from their Middle East agent or something. Hur hur hur…

Next time I shall teach Hebrew alphabets. It’s not that difficult either, pronunciation is
the same as Arabic just that they only have 22 Hebrew alphabets instead of 28 for Arabic
alphabets.

Learning Arabic
How hard is Arabic?
Any general tips on learning Arabic?
What is the best place to study Arabic in an intensive program?
What are some good books in Arabic I could read to practice?
I want to learn Arabic on my own. What are the best textbooks to use?

The Arabic language

What's the root system?
What are the verb forms?
Are broken plurals completely unpredictable? Do they have any patterns?
How similar is Arabic to Persian?

Dialects
So what's all this about standard Arabic and the dialects? If I study standard Arabic, how
much will it help me in the Middle East?
Which dialect should I learn?
How mutually intelligible are the dialects?
Which dialect is closest to standard Arabic?
What are some of the characteristics of the different dialects?

Arabic on your computer

What are all those numbers some people use when writing Arabic online?
How can I read Arabic fonts and write in Arabic on my computer?

How do you say...?

How do you say "Welcome/hello/happy birthday" etc. in Arabic?
How do you say "I love you" in Arabic?
How do you say "I miss you" in Arabic?

Learning Arabic

How hard is Arabic?

That depends on a lot of things, like what your native language is; for example, if you're a
Hebrew speaker, Arabic will be easier for you than it would be if you were a native
speaker of Spanish. But for native English speakers, Arabic is objectively a difficult
langauge, largely because it's just so different from English. The State Department's
Foreign Service Insitute ranks it as a "category 3" language ("exceptionally difficult for
native English speakers"), along with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Depending on your
native language, how much experience you have with learning languages, and so forth,
Arabic can definitely be a difficult language. But the important thing is motivation -- if
you really want to learn it and are willing to work at it, you can do it. You have to invest
a lot more time and effort into learning Arabic than you would with Indo-European
languages, so many people give up early. But like I said, if you have the desire to learn,
that'll make everything else easier.

The Arabic alphabet does seem intimidating at first -- all those squiggles, and it goes
from right to left! And then there are all those letters like ‫ج‬, ‫ح‬, and ‫ خ‬that are the same
except for the dots. But if you just sit down, focus, and go through it systematically, it's
easy to learn in just a few days. (And you can comfort yourself with the fact that at least
Arabic does have an alphabet, unlike, say, Chinese!) Pronunciation can be difficult for a
native English speaker -- letters like ‫ح‬, ‫ع‬, and ‫ غ‬may be hard to produce at first. But that
sort of stuff will get easier with practice.

What complicates things a bit is the fact that short vowels are usually not indicated in
writing outside of the Qur'an and children's books. This makes things pretty difficult
when you're just starting out and have no way of knowing, just from unvoweled text, the
correct pronunciation for words you're unfamiliar with. For example, looking at the word
‫فلفل‬, you would see "f-l-f-l" and not know what vowels come in between those letters.
The good news is, this gets easier with time and practice. And if you memorize the verb
forms (more on them below), that really helps in figuring out the correct pronunciations
for lots of words.

As far as vocabulary goes, there are only a tiny number of cognates, which does make it
harder to pick up a newspaper and immediately recognize words (as you could with, say,
French). Also, the vocabulary is very rich; there are many synonyms and words with
similar general meanings but different usages/connotations. The really hard part of
Arabic is the grammar -- it's systematic but complex, and the case endings can be difficult
to handle, particularly if you're not already used to a language like Russian or Latin.
Also, one irritating thing is the broken plurals; while some nouns take regular plurals,
many have completely irregular plurals. However, there are patterns of broken plurals,
and if you memorize enough words with their plurals, you can eventually internalize the
patterns just through the practice, and be able to guess plurals intuitively.

Stylistically Arabic is also complicated; it's quite common for sentences to go on for a
paragraph, so that by the time you reach the end you have to remind yourself what the
original subject of the sentence was! The Arabic writing style is also a lot more "flowery"
than the way English is usually written. So writing in Arabic is quite different from
writing in English, and it takes a lot of practice to write in a smooth, natural style.

And then there's the diglossia issue: the divide between the standard Arabic that's written
and the Arabic people actually speak, which varies from place to place. You can think of
the different dialects in terms of American, British, and Australian English, albeit with
more differences. You can read more on the dialects below.

Any tips on learning Arabic?

I'll focus on giving advice about learning Arabic specifically -- there's plenty out there
about language-learning in general. First of all, if you want to learn the alphabet, focus on
learning it from the beginning and try and have it down as quickly as you can, without
starting to rely on transliteration. Not only is transliteration inexact (although textbooks
should use a more systematic system, if they use transliteration at all), it can be a crutch if
you use it too much; learning the alphabet from the very start is much better.

From the very beginning, memorize the plural for every noun. Don't memorize a noun
without its plural! You don't want to end up a few months or years later in a conversation
where there's an embarrassing pause while you realize you don't know the plural for some
really basic word, like "uncle." Just pair each noun with its plural in your mind, so when
you think of the singular you automatically think of the plural, and vice versa.

Also memorize every verb along with any preposition that goes with it. As with any
foreign language, a lot of the time Arabic uses prepositions where English doesn't, or
uses different prepositions from the one we'd use in English. And it's important to
remember prepositions, because they can change the meaning of a verb completely. For
example, ‫ حذر‬means "to be careful," and ‫ حذر من‬means "to warn."

Don't get sloppy with the second short vowel in the imperfect of form 1 verbs. Since it's
irregular, you have to look it up in the dictionary and then memorize it. Do it for every
form 1 verb. You derive stuff like commands and the future from the imperfect
conjugations of verbs, so if you don't know the right pronunciation for some verb, you
won't be able to come up with the right command for it. Also memorize the maSdar for
every verb, focusing on the unpredicatable form 1 maSdars.
And memorize the verb forms as soon as you can. It does come in very useful, and if you
really focus on learning them, it's not hard to do. Just get a whiteboard and write out form
1 again and again until you know it, then add form 2 and write both forms 1 and 2 until
you have them both down, then add form 3, and so forth.

Basically, make sure you establish a strong foundation as you start learning Arabic so
you don't have to go back later to correct mistakes and fill in the gaps in your knowledge.
As with any language, what you learn as you go along builds on what you've learned
before, so make sure you have a strong base from the very start.

What is the best place to study Arabic in an intensive program?

This is another question there's no single "right answer" for. It depends on your goals,
what dialect you're learning (if you're learning a dialect at all), etc. etc. However, I can
personally strongly recommend the AUC's Arabic Language Institute. The program is
well-established and organized, with excellent teachers, and offers a wide range of
options -- you can focus on standard Arabic or learn both fuSHa and Egyptian 3ammiyya,
and at the higher levels there are electives. The ALI also hosts the CASA (Center for
Arabic Study Abroad) program, which is probably the most prestigious Arabic program
(open to advanced students only, and it's also recently established another branch in
Damascus). And in general Egypt, especially Cairo, has many Arabic programs to pick
from (if you want something a bit cheaper than the AUC, I've heard Kalimat is good, but
if you're in school you probably won't get credit hours from it). However, most young
upper-middle class Egyptians speak English, which can impede the learning process,
especially since even people who don't speak much English still want to practice it.

That's a problem in many major cities like Cairo, Amman, Beirut, and so on. But I've
heard that Syria is a great place to go for Arabic study; Damascus is less Westernized
than other Arab capitals, the people are friendly, and it's easier to get practice talking to
them in Arabic. Damascus University has an Arabic Language Center that mainly focuses
on standard Arabic (apparently it's not too hard to get tutors to help pick up the local
dialect).

Of course, in Lebanon there's the AUB (which focuses on fuSHa) and the LAU (which
also focuses on MSA but includes the Lebanese dialect in its curriculum). However, I
don't know too much about either program. Ditto for the ALIF program in Fez and Al-
Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco.

It's worth mentioning the Middlebury intensive summer Arabic program in the U.S.,
which is unique because it requires all students to sign a pledge promising to use only
Arabic 24/7 the whole summer. I've only heard good things about this program; if you do
apply, though, do it well in advance before space runs out!

Those are the main programs I know of, but here's an excellent list of intensive Arabic
programs in the U.S. and Middle East that should give you lots of ideas on different
possible choices.
What are some good books in Arabic I could read to practice?

The books I'm listing are mainly modern literature, particularly novels and some short
stories, but if you want a good overview of Arabic literature, including many different
time periods and forms of literature, I recommend Bassam K. Frangieh's Anthology of
Arabic Literature, Culture, and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present.
Obviously it's not totally comprehensive, as that would be impossible, but it's a good
introduction to Arabic literature. And it's designed for the Arabic learner, as each
selection is followed by a list of vocabulary.

Specific novels: Authors in general:

‫الزيني بركات (جمال‬
‫أليفة رفعت‬
)‫الغيطاني‬
‫ اللجنة (صنع الله‬,‫ذات‬
‫سلوى بكر‬
)‫ابراهيم‬
‫عمارة يعقوبيان (عالء‬
‫ايميلي نصرالله‬
)‫األسواني‬
)‫الصبار (سحر خليفة‬ ‫ابراهيم الكوني‬
‫ يالو (إلياس‬,‫باب الشمس‬
‫ادوار الخراط‬
)‫خوري‬
‫مدن الملح (عبد الرحمن‬
‫نجيب محفوظ‬
)‫منيف‬
‫ذاكرة الجسد (أحالم‬
‫يوسف ادريس‬
)‫مستغاني‬
‫احسان عبد‬
)‫الخبز الحافي (محمد شكري‬
‫القدوس‬
‫مزامير من ورق (نداء أبو‬
‫غسان كنفاني‬
)‫علي‬
)‫وكالة عطية (خيري شلبي‬

Another note: if you're looking for literature in colloquial Arabic, you won't find much.
Your best bet is reading plays; while more serious/high-prestige works are written in
fuSHa, comedic plays and plays with local themes are written in dialect. You could try
‫ علي سالم‬- ‫مدرسة المشاغبين‬, a very well-known play that starred famous actors like
Adel Imam and Ahmed Zaki at the beginning of their careers. Some novels do include
dialogue in 3ammiyya, like those of Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Yusuf Idris. There's an
older novel written entirely in 3ammiyya called ‫ محمد مصطفى‬- ‫قنطرة الذي كفر‬
‫مشرفة‬. And recently several books written in 3ammiyya have been published:
‫ خالد الخميسي‬- ‫ تاكسي‬- recounts conversations with Cairo taxi drivers (the dialogue,
which is the majority of the book, is written entirely in 3ammiyya; the author's narration
is in fuSHa)
‫ غادة عبد العال‬- ‫ عايزة أتجوز‬- about a young woman's interaction with different suitors as
she seeks marriage
‫ مجدي الشافعي‬- ‫ مترو‬- a banned graphic novel about a young man's plot to rob a bank

As for poetry, you could try someone like Ahmed Fu'ad Negm or Salah Jahin.

I want to learn Arabic on my own. What are the best textbooks to use?

First of all, I'll just say that learning Arabic, especially starting out with it, is difficult
enough in a class environment; if you're learning on your own, you should do your best to
find a tutor or at least a native speaker who can help you out occasionally. For teaching
yourself the alphabet, there's Alif Baa by Kristen Brustad, Mahmoud al-Batal, and Abbas
al-Tonsi, which also teaches some basic vocabulary, and The Arabic Alphabet: How to
Read and Write It. After you have the alphabet down, there are a number of textbook
options. The most frequently used textbook in U.S. Arabic classes is Al-Kitaab fi
Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya, by Brustad et al. The Al-Kitaab program is very well-developed,
and the books all include CDs with video and audio clips. However, many people
complain about the organization of the books; complaints I've seen include the somewhat
random grammar coverage, and the randomness of vocabulary (and the fact that words
taught at the beginning are often not the most basic, useful words many people would like
to know). But compared with the other books out there, it's pretty user-friendly and
probably one of the best options for learning Arabic outside of a class setting.

Peter Abboud's Elementary Modern Standard Arabic is another widely-used textbook.

From what I understand, its coverage of grammar is very thorough (albeit dry), but it's
very lacking in vocabulary and would be difficult for a beginner to use without a teacher's
guidance. I would definitely not recommend the textbook I used when starting out with
Arabic, Al-Kitaab al-Asaasi by El-Said Mohamed Badawi, unless you're already at an
intermediate or advanced level. The book is well-organized and is pretty decent, but it is
written entirely in Arabic, and would be virtually impossible for a beginner to get through
outside of a class environment.

For the beginning student, after you're learned the alphabet and are looking for other
books to supplement Al-Kitaab or whatever textbook you've chosen, Your First 100
Words in Arabic can help you start learning vocabulary. Easy Arabic Grammar is a good
choice to learn the basics of Arabic grammar; it's not totally comprehensive, but it gives a
relatively engaging and easy to understand framework of Arabic grammar.

If you're at an intermediate high/advanced level and are looking for a reference grammar,
there are quite a few options. Karin Ryding's A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard
Arabic is a good place to start; it's clear and concise, but still quite thorough (and
relatively cheap too). Haywood's A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language is
supposedly very stilted and dry, but an excellent reference with clear, thorough
explanations of grammar. Modern Written Arabic: A Comprehensive Grammar by
Adrian Gully, unlike Haywood, focuses on modern standard Arabic without including the
classical variety, and is also very thorough (albeit littered with typos). Wright's A
Grammar of the Arabic Language is a standard work, but covers classical Arabic, so if
you want to just focus on MSA, Haywood might be better.

If you're at an advanced level and want to work on your writing, there are several books
that can help. The Connectors in Modern Standard Arabic by Nariman Naili al-Warraki et
al. is an excellent way to learn all those pesky connectors (you know, ‫ لذلك‬,‫ فـ‬,‫أما‬, and
so on) so you can make your writing flow better. And it will help your overall
understanding of Arabic sentences and how they fit together. Mahdi Alosh's Using
Arabic: A Guide to Contemporary Usage covers both vocabulary and grammar from a
practical point of view, and is well worth checking out. Waheed Samy's Al-Kitaba wa-l-
Uslub is a style guide that can help your writing stylistically, but since it's entirely in
Arabic, it's for the advanced student only.

And if you're overwhelmed by Arabic's multitude of synonyms, Using Arabic Synonyms

by Dilworth Parkinson will definitely come in useful. It lists synonyms in groups along
with several sentences using each word so you can see the context the words are used in.
If you're working on Arabic used in the news media, Media Arabic Volume One by
Nariman Naili Al-Warraki et al. is a good place to start; it has little excerpts from various
articles (all of them pretty dry), along with vocabulary used in the excerpts. If you
supplant it with your own reading, it's pretty helpful.

For Egyptian Arabic, the best books I've come across are Lonely Planet's Egyptian
Arabic Phrasebook, and A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic by Ernest T. Abdel-
Massih et al. I know it seems ridiculous to recommend a travel phrasebook, but it really is
an excellent little book, and includes a large amount of useful vocabulary, not limited to
just making hotel reservations and so forth. It also includes a decent amount of well laid
out, clearly explained grammar info (although perhaps not enough to use by itself; some
knowledge of standard Arabic would help). And it has everything in both Arabic script
and English transliteration (although I've noticed that sometimes what's written in Arabic
is standard, while the transliteration is colloquial Arabic).

A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic is suited for students at an intermediate or

advanced level -- with the caveat that it is rather old (I believe it was written in the
1970s), and therefore some of the vocabulary is a little out of date. However, overall it's
still very useful, although it's not glossy or flashy. Volume One consists of passages
dealing with cultural topics (which would perhaps be more useful in a class setting, but is
still good). Volume Two is a compilation of many, many proverbs (arranged
thematically) and idioms, and is a really useful way to learn expressions that make your
speech sound more "native." Volume Three is a grammar book, with detailed
explanations of many aspects of Egyptian Arabic grammar, and Volume Four is a great
lexicon, with many vocabulary lists arranged by theme (the first half of the book is
Arabic-English, the second half is English-Arabic). You can order these books directly
from the University of Michigan press, which is what I did (it seems to be impossible to
find them elsewhere, although you could try your local university library).
There is also a five-book series called Kallimni 'Arabi, by Samia Louis, that teaches
Egyptian Arabic from the beginning to advanced levels, although the last few volumes
haven't been released yet (as of November 2008). I haven't seen these books, but I have
heard good things about them, so you might check them out if you get the chance.

Regarding dictionaries...The Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary is without a doubt

essential for any serious student of Arabic. It's arranged by root instead of alphabetically,
which can take a while to get used to, but once you get used to the system, it's quite user-
friendly, and it makes it even more useful to have all the words from a single root
together. For Egyptian Arabic, the Martin Hinds dictionary is excellent; also arranged by
root, it includes sample sentences, proverbs, and so on to demonstrate usage of the words,
which is really, really helpful. It's pricey but worth every penny.

And finally, if you work through T.F. Mitchell's Writing Arabic: A Practical Introduction
to Ruq'ah Script, you should end up with handwriting that's at least a decent facsimile of
native speakers' writing. Most Arabic students start off writing in the naskh style, which
is simple and easy to read but looks sort of like elementary school kids' print writing to
Arabs. The ruq3a script is what's used in native speakers' everyday handwriting, so it's
worthwhile to try and write like that if you can.

The Arabic Language

What's the root system?

Most Arabic words are derived from a three-letter root that connotes a general meaning.
(There are some four-letter roots, but they're quite rare.) The usual example given is d-r-s,
which has to do with studying. So the form 1 verb ‫ درس‬darasa means "to study," while
the form 2 verb ‫ دّر س‬darrasa means "to teach"; ‫ درس‬dars means "lesson," ‫مدرسة‬
madrasa means "school," and ‫ مدّر س‬mudarris means "teacher." And so forth; you can
derive tons of words with related meanings from a single root. It's really quite helpful; if
you come across an unfamiliar word in an article but recognize the root, you can use that
knowledge to make a good guess at the meaning.

What are the verb forms?

Every trilateral Arabic root can (theoretically) be transformed into one of fifteen possible
verb forms (‫ أوزان‬awzaan). (Forms 11 through 15 are very rare, so people usually just
focus on forms 1 through 10, although 9 is also pretty rare). Each form has a basic
meaning associated with the general meaning of the root being used. Here's a more
detailed breakdown, using ‫( فعل‬fa3ala, to do) as an example (this is all taken from old
handouts I got at the AUC, so it's not my original work or anything):

Form 1 - ‫( فعل‬fa3ala)
Expresses the general verbal meaning of the root in question
‫( خ ر ج‬x-r-j) - leaving, departing ‫( خرج‬xaraja) - to leave, go out
‫( ج م ع‬j-m-3) - joining, uniting ‫( جمع‬jama3a) - to gather, collect
 ‫( عمل‬3amala) - to work, to do, to
‫( ع م ل‬3-m-l) - doing, making
make
‫( ق ط ع‬q-T-3) - cutting ‫( قطع‬qaTa3a) - to cut, cut off
‫( ب ع د‬b-3-d) - separating, distance ‫( بعد‬ba3ada) - to be far from

Form 2 - ‫( فّعل‬fa33ala)
Built on form 1 by doubling the middle radical of the form 1 verb (adding a shadda to it)
Often is a causative version of the form 1 verb
Ex. ‫( خرج‬xaraja) means "to go out"; ‫( خّر ج‬xarraja) means "to make (s.o.) go out; to
graduate (s.o.)"
Often an intensive version of the form 1 verb (especially if the form 1 verb is transitive)
Ex. ‫( جمع‬jama3a) means "to collect, gather"; ‫( جّمع‬jamma3a) means "to amass, to
accummulate"

Form 3 - ‫( فاعل‬faa3ala)
Built on form 1 by adding an alif between the first and second radicals of the form 1 verb
Usually gives an associative meaning to the form 1 verb; describes someone doing the act
in question to or with someone else
Ex. ‫( عمل‬3amala) means "to work"; ‫( عامل‬3aamala) means "to treat or deal with
(s.o.)"

Form 4 - ‫( أفعل‬af3ala)
Built on form 1 by prefixing an alif to the form 1 verb and putting a sukuun over the first
radical
Similar to form 2 in that it is usually a causative version of the form 1 verb
Ex. ‫( خرج‬xaraja) means "to go out"; ‫( خّر ج‬xarraja) means "to graduate (s.o.)"; ‫أخرج‬
(axraja) means "to expel, to evict; to produce"

Form 5 - ‫( تفّعل‬tafa33ala)
Built on form 2 by adding the prefix ‫ تـ‬to the form 2 verb
Often a reflexive version of the form 2 verb
Ex. ‫( خّر ج‬xarraja) means "to graduate (s.o.)"; ‫( تخرج‬taxarraja) means "to graduate"
(Note: form 5 is usually intransitive)
Sometimes an intensive version of a form 1 verb
Ex. ‫( جمع‬jama3a) means "to collect, gather"; ‫( تجّمع‬tajamma3a) means "to congregate,
to flock together"

Form 6 - ‫( تفاعل‬tafaa3ala)
Built on form 3 by adding the prefix ‫ تـ‬to the form 3 verb
Usually a reflexive version of the form 3 verb
Ex. ‫( عامل‬3aamala) means "to treat or deal with (s.o.)"; ‫( تعامل‬ta3aamala) means "to
deal with each other" (Form 6 is usually intransitive)

Form 7 - ‫( انفعل‬infa3ala)
Built on form 1 by adding the prefix ‫ انـ‬to the form 1 verb
Usually a reflexive and/or passive version of the form 1 verb
 Ex. ‫( قطع‬qaTa3a) means "to cut, to cut off"; ‫( انقطع‬inqaTa3a) means "to be cut off
(from); to abstain (from)"

Form 8 - ‫( افتعل‬ifta3ala)
Built on form 1 by adding the prefix ‫ ا‬to the form 1 verb and placing a sukuun must be
placed over its first radical
Often a reflexive version of the form 1 verb
Ex. ‫( جمع‬jama3a) means "to collect, gather"; ‫( اجتمع‬ijtama3a) means "to meet; to agree
(on)"
Sometimes has a specially derived meaning relative to a form 1 verb
Ex. ‫( بعد‬ba3ada) means "to be far away"; ‫( ابتعد‬ibta3ada) means "to avoid"

Form 9 - ‫( افعّل‬if3alla)
Built on form 1 by adding the prefix ‫ ا‬to the form 1 verb, placing a sukuun over its first
radical, and adding a shadda to the last radical
Relates to colors
Ex. ‫( ح م ر‬H-m-r) relates to "redness"; ‫( احمّر‬iHmarra) means "to become or turn red"

Form 10 - ‫( استفعل‬istaf3ala)
Built on form 1 by adding the prefix ‫ استـ‬to the form 1 verb and inserting a ‫ ت‬between
the first and second radicals; a sukuun must be placed over the first radical
Often a considerative version of the form 1 verb; means "to consider or to deem someone
to have the quality" of the form 1 verb in question
Ex. ‫( بعد‬ba3ada) means "to be far away"; ‫( استبعد‬istab3ada) means "to consider s.o. or
s.t. remote or unlikely"
Often a requestive version of a form 1 verb; means "to request or to seek something" for
oneself
‫( عمل‬3amala) means "to make; to do"; ‫( استعمل‬ista3mala) means "to use, to put into
operation" (that is, to seek to make something work for oneself)

And here's a table of all the verb forms, including their perfect and imperfect
conjugations (‫)الماضي والمضارع‬, active and passive participles ( ‫اسم الفاعل واسم‬
‫)المفعول‬, and verbal nouns (‫)المصدر‬. Because they're all regular and predictable (with
the exception of form 1 - the second vowel in the imperfect and perfect conjugations, and
the verbal noun), if you just memorize them, you'll know them for almost every verb
there is. So if you're learning Arabic, I suggest you memorize all the verb forms along
with their associated meanings as soon as you can; it'll really come in handy.

‫اسم‬ ‫الماض المضار اسم‬

‫المصدر‬
‫المفعول‬ ‫الفاعل‬ ‫ع‬ ‫ي‬
‫؟‬ ‫َمْفُعول‬ ‫فاِع ل‬ ‫َيْفعُل‬ ‫َفعَل‬ 1
‫َتْفِعيل‬ ‫ُمَفَّعل‬ ‫ُمَفِّعل‬ ‫ُيَفِّعُل‬ ‫َفَّعَل‬ 2
or ‫ُمفاَعَلة‬ ‫ُمفاَعل‬ ‫ُمفاِع ل‬ ‫ُيفاِع ُل‬ ‫فاَعَل‬ 3
 ‫ِفعال‬
‫إْفعال‬ ‫ُمْفَعل‬ ‫ُمْفِعل‬ ‫ُيْفِعُل‬ ‫أْفَعَل‬ 4
‫َتَفُّعل‬ ‫ُمَتَفَّعل‬ ‫ُمَتَفِّعل‬ ‫َيَتَفَّعُل‬ ‫َتَفَّعَل‬ 5
‫َتفاُعل‬ ‫َتفاَعَل َيَتفاَعُل ُمَتفاِع ل ُمَتفاَعل‬ 6
‫ِاْنِفعال‬ ‫ُمْنَفَعل‬ ‫ُمْنَفِعل‬ ‫ِاْنَفَعَل َيْنَفِعُل‬ 7
‫ِاْفِتعال‬ ‫ُمْفَتَعل‬ ‫ُمْفَتِعل‬ ‫ِاْفَتَعَل َيْفَتِعُل‬ 8
‫ِاْفِعالل‬ - ‫ُمْفَعّل‬ ‫َيْفَعُّل‬ ‫ِاْفَعَّل‬ 9
‫ُمْس َتْفِع‬ ‫ِاْس َتْفَع َيْس َتْفِع‬
‫ُمْس َتْفَعل ِاْس ِتْفعال‬ 10
‫ل‬ ‫ُل‬ ‫َل‬

Are broken plurals completely unpredictable? Do they have any patterns?

First of all, an explanation of broken plurals for those who don't know: the majority of
masculine nouns in Arabic have irregular plurals. Although there is a regular way to form
plurals (adding ‫)ـون‬, most masculine nouns don't fall under this category. A significant
number of feminine nouns don't either (the regular feminine plural ending is ‫)ـات‬. So
many nouns have plurals that seem completely random at first (the plural of ‫ كتاب‬kitaab
is ‫ كتب‬kutub; the plural of ‫ ولد‬walad is ‫ أوالد‬awlaad).

But broken plurals do indeed have patterns; you can see a list here. I don't really
recommend memorizing the list, though; just memorize every plural for every noun, and
you'll learn them intuitively and eventually be able to guess at the plurals of new nouns
you learn.

How similar is Arabic to Persian?

Persian does use the same alphabet, with a few additions and modifications (and
significant pronunciation differences), and it has a good amount of Arabic loan words
(about 30 to 50 percent of the Persian lexicon is derived from Arabic, although a lot of
words have changed their meanings from the Arabic original). But since Arabic is an
Afro-Asiatic language and Persian is an Indo-European language (like English), they are
fundamentally different languages.

It would probably be safe to say that for a native English speaker, Persian would be easier
to learn than Arabic. It has no grammatical gender, case endings, or noun-adjective
agreement. It doesn't have a root system like Arabic, instead using affixation (prefixes
and suffixes) in a similar way to English. There are no verb forms either, but verbs in
Persian do present their own set of complications.
Persian uses the same script as Arabic, including all 28 Arabic letters plus four more. The
emphatic consonants are used only in Arabic loanwords, and none are pronounced like
they are in Arabic. For instance, the ‫ ع‬is pronounced like an ‫ا‬, and ‫ ذ‬,‫ ظ‬,‫ض‬, and ‫ ز‬are all
pronounced "z" like ‫ز‬. The letters ‫ ق‬and ‫ غ‬are both pronounced "gh," and ‫ و‬is
pronounced "v" (in Iran; in Afghanistan it's pronounced like it is in Arabic). But knowing
the correct vowels for Arabic words will definitely help you know how to pronounce the
corresponding loanwords in Persian.

For more details on the relationship between Arabic and Persian, check out this great
article.

Dialects

So what's all this about standard Arabic and the dialects? If I study standard
Arabic, how much will it help me in the Middle East?

Standard Arabic (‫ الفصحى‬al-fuSHa) is what is usually taught in Western universities. It's

the formal variety used in the news media, literature and formal writing in general, and
official occasions. If you mainly want to do research in Arabic, or understand Al-Jazeera,
Al-Ahram, and Naguib Mahfouz books, standard Arabic is what you need to learn. But
Arabs don't speak standard Arabic in their daily lives, nor is it anyone's native language.
Arabs grow up speaking their own dialects and start to learn fuSHa only once they enter
school, although they develop a passive understanding of it prior to that time via the
media.

And after finishing their education, many Arabs lose a great deal of their active
knowledge of fuSHa, particularly the details of grammar rules. They may still be able to
feel out the correct grammar by intuition, but they won't be able to give an explanation of
why it's correct. Of course this doesn't go for everyone, but I think it's safe to say it's true
for most people who aren't particularly interested in the Arabic language -- and most
people aren't really, just as the majority of native English speakers are not particularly
interested in the finer points of the language.

Outside of formal contexts in general, Arabs use their own dialects, which all diverge
from standard Arabic in different ways. Colloquial Arabic (‫ العامية‬al-3ammiyya) is used
in songs, TV shows (musalsalaat) and talk shows, movies, and some literature (plays, a
small amount of poetry, and some novels which include dialogue in 3ammiyya). Many
Arabs don't consider 3ammiyya to be "real" Arabic, and view it as a low kind of slang,
not a valid form of Arabic. Others, like Egyptian and Lebanese nationalists who reject an
Arab identity, have tried to promote their local dialects while denigrating standard Arabic
as outdated. There are many interesting socio-political aspects to the Arabic diglossia
issue (diglossia refers to the divide between standard and colloquial Arabic).

The Arabic dialects can be classified into four categories: Maghrebi (spoken in Northern
African countries like Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia), Egyptian, Levantine (spoken in
Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan), and Gulf/Khaliiji (spoken in the Persian Gulf;
Yemeni Arabic is sufficiently different from the other dialects spoken in the Gulf that it
can be classified on its own, though). In each of these regions are various local sub-
dialects (for example, in Egypt there's the Cairo, Alexandria, Upper Egypt, etc. dialects),
but nevertheless they share enough common characteristics that they can be classified in
one category, and people from different parts of the same region will have little trouble
understanding each other.

If you only know standard Arabic and have no knowledge of any of the dialects, you can
go to the Middle East and be understood when you speak to people (unless they're very,
very uneducated), but you probably won't understand a whole lot when they speak to you.
Among the more educated segment of the population, people generally can speak in
fuSHa, but it feels unnatural and strange to them. They may use a more "elevated"
dialect, mixing in some fuSHa with their dialect, but the base of what they speak is still
colloquial. As for more uneducated people, they would have a lot more difficulty
speaking in fuSHa.

Basically, if you only know fuSHa, you'll miss out on a huge part of Arab culture. You'll
be unable to interact naturally with people (even if you get people to talk to you in fuSHa,
it's not the norm for them), and you won't be able to enjoy any aspects of popular culture
like music, TV (aside from news broadcasts etc.), or movies. Of course, if you only know
3ammiyya, you'll be shut out from a whole other chunk of Arab culture: literature and the
media. That's why it's really best to learn both standard Arabic and a dialect. But if you
don't have the time, consider your goals and choose which variety of Arabic to learn
based on what you want to do with Arabic. If you want to travel in the Middle East, talk
with Arab family or friends, and enjoy aspects of popular culture like movies, then focus
on colloquial Arabic. If you're interested in Arabic for research purposes or want to focus
on literature or the news media, learn standard Arabic.

Which dialect should I learn?

That really depends. If you have a special interest in a particular part of the Arab world,
or if you have friends or family from a certain area, go ahead and learn that dialect --
although if you're interested in, say, Morocco or Algeria, just keep in mind that unless
you modify your speech significantly, no one will understand you outside the Maghreb. If
you want to learn 3ammiyya but have no real leaning towards one variety or another, I
would recommend Egyptian or Levantine Arabic. Egyptian is the most widely understood
dialect, thanks to the well-established music, TV, and film industry there; Egyptian media
is popular enough that no matter where you go in the Arab world, you'll keep hearing
Egyptian Arabic on TV and the radio. If you learn Egyptian Arabic, people all over the
Arab world will be able to understand you easily.

Levantine Arabic is probably the next most widely understood dialect after Egyptian.
Thanks to the popularity of Lebanese music, Syrian musalsalaat, and so on, the Levantine
dialect is pretty well-understood in the Arab world. Gulf Arabic is not very widely
understood outside the Khaliij, though, and as for Maghrebi Arabic, forget about it! Of
course native speakers of Maghrebi Arabic can make themselves understood in the
Mashriq (eastern part of the Arab world) by modifying their speech, but that's more
difficult for a foreigner to do, so if I were picking a dialect, I would go with one that's
easily understood throughout the Arab world like Egyptian or Levantine.

How mutually intelligible are the dialects?

As I've said above, Maghrebi Arabic is definitely the hardest to understand for speakers
of other dialects, since it's diverged from fuSHa so much (due to its Berber and French
influences). But native speakers usually don't have much trouble with different dialects,
since they generally modify their speech and speak in a more standardized version of
their dialect when interacting with Arabs from different regions. Sometimes speakers of
dialects that aren't widely understood will even switch to Egyptian Arabic and use that so
people will understand them. (While people may incorporate fuSHa elements into their
speech, they usually don't speak entirely in fuSHa; it would be more natural to use a
dialect that may not be their own, like Egyptian, rather than use just standard Arabic.)

If you learn one dialect well and also have a good knowledge of standard Arabic,
switching to another dialect shouldn't be too hard. For one thing, the dialects share a
number of common characteristics across the board that will help you make sense of
them. And if you have a good knowledge of fuSHa vocabulary, that'll help too, since a
number of the different words used in different dialects come from fuSHa and just take
on slightly different meanings. (For example, if you know that the word ‫ مناخير‬means
"nostrils" in fuSHa, it won't be too hard to guess that in Egyptian Arabic it means
"nose.") There may be a period of adjustment at first while you get used to the different
pronunciation, rhythms of speech, vocabulary, and so on, but it won't be impossible by
any means, and it gets easier with practice.

Which dialect is closest to standard Arabic?

None of them! Lots of Arabs say that their dialect is the closest to fuSHa, but the truth is
that they've all diverged from standard Arabic in one way or another. One dialect may be
more "standard" than another in some way, but then it will also be less standard in some
other aspect, and so forth. It is safe to say, though, that Maghrebi Arabic is the farthest
from fuSHa.

What are some of the characteristics of the different dialects?

Speaking generally, and mostly confining my remarks to Egyptian and Levantine Arabic
(since those are the only two I have any real knowledge of):

Pronunciation: The ‫( ق‬qaaf) is often pronounced as a glottal stop in many urban

dialects, as a hard G in many parts of the Gulf and rural and Bedouin dialects, and as a K
in some rural areas of Palestine. The ‫( ك‬kaaf) is sometimes pronounced as a "ch" in parts
of Iraq, rural Palestine, and the Gulf. In the Levant, the ta marbuuTa is often pronounced
"-e" (Palestine/Jordan) or "-i" (Lebanon) instead of "-a." The ‫( ج‬jiim) is pronounced as a
hard G in urban Egyptian Arabic (and also parts of Yemen). In Egypt, the ‫( ث‬th) is
usually pronounced as an "s" or "t," the ‫( ذ‬dh) becomes a "d" or "z," and the ‫( ظ‬DH) is
pronounced more like an emphatic "z," and sometimes becomes a ‫ض‬.

Vocabulary: The dialects include a lot of loan words from different languages like
French, Turkish, Greek, English, Persian, and Italian. Here are some examples used in
Egyptian Arabic (some of these words are also used in standard Arabic):

Turkish - kobri (bridge), from köprü; ooDa (room), from oda; šakuuš (hammer), from
çekiç; yafTa (sign), from yafta; haanim (respectful title for a lady), from hanım; baaša
and beih (respectful titles of address), from paşa and bey; balTagi (thug), from baltacı;
gumruk (customs) from gümrük; gazma (shoe), from çizme (the Levantine word for shoe,
kundara, is also from Turkish - kundura)
French - blaaž (beach), from plage; kanaba (sofa), from canapé; dušš (shower), from
douche; gatooh (cake), from gâteau; aSanSeir (elevator), from ascenseur; garsoon
(waiter), from garçon; iišaarb (scarf), from écharpe; balTo (coat), from paletot; sešwaar
(hairdryer), from séchoir
Italian - mooDa (style, fashion), from moda; gambari (shrimp), from gambero; kawitš
(tire), from caucciù; gunilla (skirt), from gonnella; guwanti (gloves), from guanti; bosTa
(mail, postal service), from posta; rušitta (medical prescription), from ricetta; faraawla
(strawberry), from fragola
Persian - dulaab (cabinet), from dol-âb; buršaam (pills, tablets), from parchîn; kaškuul
(notebook), from kashkûl; banafsigi (violet), from banafsha; tarzi (tailor), from darzî;
kamanga (violin), from kamâncha; zarkiš (to embroider/decorate), from zar-kash; lobya
(string beans), from lûbiyâ
Greek - Tarabeiza (table), from trapezi; kaburiya (crab), from kabouros; istakooza
(lobster), from astakos; salaTa (salad), from salata

However, most of the colloquial words that differ from standard Arabic are concentrated
in the area of everyday vocabulary. The majority of words in, say, Egyptian Arabic are
the same as they are in fuSHa, just pronounced a bit differently -- and especially once
you get into more high-level vocabulary, like the words used in the media, the words
used in fuSHa are also used in the dialects, with the only real difference being some
pronunciation modifications. Here's a list of some basic colloquial words to give a quick
idea of a few vocabulary differences between dialects:

English Egyptian Arabic Levantine Arabic Moroccan Arabic

‫( أش‬aš) or ‫شنو‬
what ‫( ايه‬eih) ‫( شو‬šuu) or ‫( ايش‬aiš) (šnuu) or ‫أشنو‬
(ašnuu)
how ‫( ازي‬izzay) ‫( كيف‬keif) ‫( كيفاش‬kifaaš)
‫( الش‬laš) or ‫عالش‬
why ‫( ليه‬leih) ‫( ليش‬leiš)
(3laaš)
where ‫( فين‬fein) ‫( وين‬wein) ‫( فين‬fiin)
thing ‫( حاجة‬Haaga) ‫( شي‬šii) ‫( شي‬šii)
now ‫( دلوقت‬dilwa'ti) ‫( هّلق‬halla') ‫( دابا‬daaba)
very; a lot ‫'( قوي‬awi) ‫( كتير‬ktiir) ‫( بزاف‬bzzaf)
word used to
‫عاوز‬/‫( عايز‬the active ‫( بّد‬badd-/bidd- +
express ‫( بغى‬bġa)
participle 3aayiz/3aawiz) possessive pronoun)
wanting
shoe ‫( جزمة‬gazma) ‫( كندرة‬kundara/kendara) ‫( سباط‬sbbaT)
mouth ‫( بّق‬bo'') ‫( تّم‬timm) ‫( فم‬fomm)
‫بندورة‬
tomato ‫( طماطم‬TamaaTim) ‫( ماطيشة‬maTiiša)
(bandoora/banadoora)
‫ يحكي‬- ‫( حكى‬Haka - ‫ يقول‬- ‫( قال‬gal -
to say ‫ يقول‬- ‫'( قال‬aal - yi'uul)
yiHki) yiguul)
fridge ‫( تالجة‬tallaaga) ‫( بّر اد‬birraad/barraad) ‫( تالجة‬tlaja)
table ‫( طربيزة‬Tarabeiza) ‫( طاولة‬Taawle) ‫( طبلة‬Tbla)
clothes ‫( هدوم‬huduum) ‫( أواعي‬awaa3i) ‫( حوايج‬Hwayj)
money ‫( فلوس‬filuus) ‫( مصاري‬maSaari) ‫( فلوس‬flus)
car ‫( عربية‬3arabiyya) ‫( سيارة‬sayyaara) ‫( طوموبيل‬Tomobiil)
bottle ‫'( قزازة‬izaaza) ‫'( قنينة‬aniine) ‫( قرعة‬qr3a)
cheese ‫( جبنة‬gibna) ‫( جبنة‬jebne) ‫( فرماج‬frmaj)
bowl ‫( سلطنية‬sulTaniyya) ‫( جاط‬jaaT) ‫( زالفة‬zlafa)

Grammar: Colloquial Arabic in general uses much simpler grammar than standard
Arabic (and for that, we can all be thankful!). There are no case endings in 3ammiyya,
and there are no dual conjugations of verbs either. A "b-" present continuous prefix is
added to the imperfect (in some parts of the Levant ‫ عم‬is also added before the verb).
Instead of using ‫ سـ‬or ‫ سوف‬to indicate the future, a "h-" prefix is used (although in some
parts of the Levant, ‫ راح‬is said before the verb instead). Negation is simpler with the use
of ‫ مش‬as opposed to ‫ ليس‬and its variants, and in Egypt, the past and present tenses are
negated with a ‫ش‬...‫ ما‬prefix-suffix combination (the Levant usually just uses the "ma"
prefix). The future tense is negated with ‫ مش‬instead of ‫لن‬. And so forth.

Arabic on your computer

What are all those numbers some people use when writing Arabic online?

They were developed in chat rooms where people couldn't write using the Arabic
alphabet, so they had to type in English transliteration and come up with ways to
represent the Arabic letters that don't exist in English.

‫= ء‬2 ‫=ح‬7 ‫ = ظ‬6'

‫= ع‬3 ‫ = خ‬5 or 7' ‫= ص‬9
‫ = غ‬3' or gh ‫ =ط‬6 ‫ = ض‬9'

How can I read Arabic fonts and write in Arabic on my computer?

For Windows XP (Windows Vista users see here): Go to the Control Panel, then select
Regional and Language Options. Click on the Languages tab at the top.
To install Arabic font support - Under the "Supplemental language support" section,
check the box for "Install files for complex scripts and right-to-left languages (including
Thai)." Click "Apply."

To enable writing in Arabic - Under the "Text services and input languages" section,
click on the Details button. A box will pop up, and under the Settings tab you'll see an
"Installed services" tab. Click on the Add button at the right, and an Add Input Language
box will appear. Select any variety of Arabic you want; it won't make a difference. Back
in the "Text services and input languages" box, go to the "Preferences" section at the
bottom (still in the "Settings" tab) and click the Language Bar button. Check the boxes
saying "Show the language bar on the desktop" and "Show additional language bar icons
in the taskbar." A little box with "EN" on it will appear at the bottom right, in the taskbar;
clicking on the "EN" will pop up a menu where you can toggle back and forth between
English and Arabic. Use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift to toggle between languages
more quickly.

If you want to be able to type in Arabic without going through these steps, you can use
this online Arabic keyboard. You can also use it to learn the Arabic keyboard layout. For
really exhaustive information on enabling Arabic for Windows, this webpage covers just
about everything. Mac users can use this information to enable Arabic support.

How do you say...?

How do you say "Welcome/hello/happy birthday" etc. in Arabic?

I have an entire page dedicated to common phrases like this here. But you can use ‫أهال‬
‫ وسهال‬ahlan wa sahlan or ‫ مرحبا‬marHaba for both "Welcome" and "Hello." "Happy
birthday" is 3 ‫عيد ميالد سعيد‬iid miilaad sa3iid, but people usually just use ‫كل سنة وانت‬
‫ طيب‬kull sana winta Tayyib (in Egypt), or ‫ كل سنة وانت سالم‬kull sane winte saalim (in
the Levant). The standard phrase is ‫ كل عام وأنتم بخير‬kull 3aam wa-antum bexeir. If
you're addressing a woman, say ‫ كل سنة وانت طيبة‬kull sana winti Tayyiba or ‫كل سنة‬
‫ وانت سالمة‬kull sane winti saalme. (The standard phrase stays the same.)

How do you say "I love you" in Arabic?

Standard Arabic Egyptian Arabic

Addressed to a man ‫ أحبك‬- uHibbuka ‫ بحبك‬- baHebbak
Addressed to a woman ‫ أحبك‬- uHibbuki ‫ بحبك‬- baHebbik
‫ أحبكما‬- ‫ بحبكو‬-
Addressed to two people
uHibbukuma baHebbuku
Addressed to three or more people, at least one ‫ بحبكو‬-
‫ أحبكم‬- uHibbukum
of whom is a man baHebbuku
‫ بحبكو‬-
Addressed to three or more women ‫ أحبكن‬- uHibbukunna
baHebbuku
You can say ‫" أنا‬ana" beforehand, but it's not really necessary, since it's clear that it's "I"
just from the conjugation. If you want to say you love someone "a lot," you can add ‫كثيرا‬
katiiran or ‫ حبا جما‬Hubban jamman in fuSHa, or ‫' قوي‬awi in 3ammiyya. Or for an even
more enthusiastic emphasis, you can say ‫' قد الدنيا‬add id-dunya, which would sound a
little corny but cute.

And here's a list of Arabic endearments. Note that if you use them to address someone,
they should be preceded by ‫( يا‬ya); ex. "ya Habiibi," "ya ruuHi."

‫ حبيبي‬Habiibi (to a man or a woman); ‫ حبيبتي‬Habibti (to a woman) - my darling (also

used between friends and family, including people of the same sex)
‫ حبيب قلبي‬Habiib 'albi (to a man); ‫ حبيبة قلبي‬Habibet 'albi (to a woman) - my heart's
darling
3 ‫عزيزي‬aziizi (to a man or a woman); 3 ‫عزيزتي‬azizti (to a woman) - my dear
‫ روحي‬ruuHi - my soul
3 ‫عيني‬eini - my eye
3 ‫عيوني‬oyuuni - my eyes
‫ عينايا‬/ ‫( نور عيني‬nuur 3eini/3einaya) - light of my eye/eyes
‫ حياتي‬Hayaati; 3 ‫عمري‬omri - my life
‫ غالي‬ġaali (to a man); ‫ غالية‬ġaliya (to a woman) - precious
3 ‫عسل‬asal - honey
‫ حلو‬Helw (to a man); ‫ حلوة‬Helwa (to a woman) - sweet

How do you say "I miss you" in Arabic?

Standard Arabic Egyptian Arabic

‫ أنا مشتاق(ة) إليك‬- ana ‫ وحشتني‬-
Addressed to a man
muštaaq(at)un ileika waHašteni
‫ أنا مشتاق(ة) إليك‬- ana ‫ وحشتيني‬-
Addressed to a woman
muštaaq(at)un ileiki waHaštiini
‫ أنا مشتاق(ة) إليكما‬- ana ‫ وحشتوني‬-
Addressed to two people
muštaaq(at)un ileikuma waHaštuuni
Addressed to three or more people, ‫ أنا مشتاق(ة) إليكم‬- ana ‫ وحشتوني‬-
at least one of whom is a man muštaaq(at)un ileikum waHaštuuni
‫ أنا مشتاق(ة) إليكن‬- ana ‫ وحشتوني‬-
Addressed to three or more women
muštaaq(at)un ileikunna waHaštuuni

For the standard Arabic column, I put the appropriate phrase if you're a woman in
parentheses -- so if you're male, ignore what's in the parentheses and use ‫مشتاق‬
muštaaqun, and if you're female, use ‫ مشتاقة‬muštaaqatun. For the Egyptian dialect, what
I wrote is actually the past tense, which is frequently used to express "I miss you" in the
present tense. The present-tense conjugations are:

Addressed to a man ‫ وحشني‬- waHešni

Addressed to a woman ‫ وحشاني‬- waHšaani
Addressed to more than one person ‫ وحشني‬- waHšenni

‫النصيحة الذهبية في كيفية تعلم اللغة العربية‬

an-nasehah adh-dhahabiyyah fee kayfiyati

ta'lumil-lughatil-arabiyyah
The Golden Advice Regarding The Proper
Manner Of Learning The Arabic Language (NB
this piece has been edited & modified).
Orignal article By Abu Umar al-Jurjani

All praise is for Allah. We praise him and seek his assistance. May the salah and salam be
upon the messenger of Allah and all those who follow the prophetic path until the last
day. Amma ba’d: Many brothers have asked me about learning the Arabic language
and the best way to arrive at an understanding of the qur’an and sunnah. In response
to these brothers I put this small essay together. May Allah grant us ikhlaas and
sucsess in our efforts. Some of the salaf used to say, “man dakhala fil ilm jumlatan,
kharaja minhu jumlatan.” “Whoever entered into knowledge all at once, it shall leave
him all at once.” It is binding upon the student of any subject to gain an
understanding and basic conception of what exactly he/she is studying. In Arabic this
is called ‘tasawwur’. The lack of a proper ‘tasawwur’ concerning the method of
learning Arabic is perhaps the biggest problem facing those that attempt to learn
Arabic in the west. One simply has to look at the many numerous books on the Arabic
language that are currently on the market in the west. With all of these books
available, it would seem like everyone in the Muslim community would know Arabic
by now but that is not the case. The reason for this lack of learning despite the
presence of many decent books is built upon my previous statement about the lack
of ‘tasawwur’. As for those who have no desire to learn Arabic or only claim that they
want to learn while expending no efforts in that path I ask allah to give them tawfeeq
and desire to understand the language of the qur’an and sunnah.

What is the Arabic language?

a) The Arabic language is a Semitic language that is primarily based upon three letter
root words. For example we say ‘madh’hab’, this word comes from the root- dhaal-
haa’-baa’. This word is derived from the root verb dha’haba. It is expected that those
reading this already know this.

b) The Arabic language is composed of different sciences. When someone learns

Arabic he/she must understand that he is in fact learning three sciences. Realizing
this separation between the various sciences assist the student of Arabic in grasping
the language. With this he will know where the language begins and where it ends. It
is indeed unfortunate that most modern books of Arabic language instruction fail to
even mention this. See what I mean when I spoke about the lack of ‘tasawwur’?
 The sciences of Arabic are in fact twelve in number. However the sciences that are
the most important for the understanding of the qur’an and sunnah are three:

I. Nahw: It is most often translated as ‘grammar’. Nahw is a study of the language

and the various rules governing the words as they appear in a sentence. For example
I will now mention to you three sentences and discuss the difference between them
please pay close attention.

 1. ‘la tashrubil-laban wa ta’kulu as-samak’

 2. ‘la tashrubil-laban wa ta’kulis-samak’
 3. ‘la tashrubil-laban wa ta’kula as-samak’

What is the difference between these three in meaning? The difference between
them is in the ending of the verb ‘ta’kul’ which means to eat. In the first sentence
‘ta’kul’ ends with a dummah. In the second sentence the verb ‘ta’kul ends with a
sukuun. In the third sentence however, the last letter of ‘ta’kul’ ends with a
fathah.the difference occurs because of the different usages for the ‘waw’. In the first
sentence the ‘waw’ is the ‘waw’ signifying a separation. It means, “Do not drink the
milk (but no problem) and your eating fish. In the second sentence the ‘waw’ is the
‘waw’ of joining. The sentence means, “do not drink the milk or eat the fish.” In the
third sentence the ‘waw’ signifies a unity of action (ma’aiyah). This sentence means,
“do not drink the milk and eat the fish at the same time.” All of these changes in
meaning took place due to the type of ‘waw’ used. The changes were not only in the
actual structure of the harakaat in the words, but also in the meaning of the
sentences.

II. Sarf: It is often translated as ‘morphology’. The actual meaning of sarf is “the
metamorphosing or changing of the ‘asl (base/root word) to many different examples
so as to achieve meanings that could not otherwise be achieved” The science of sarf
is mostly relegated to verbs and that which derives from them. This change is done
to stretch the meaning and to also make pronunciation easy upon the toque. An
example of changing the meaning through sarf is manipulating the verb ‘nasara’.
From ‘nasara’ we may derive the following: Nasara Nas’sara Naasara tanaasara
anassara istansara mansar naasir munasar mansoor . All of these words come from
one root verb - nasara. As for making it easy upon the tonque I will provide one
example. Let us take the word ‘scale in Arabic. It is called ‘meezaan’. This word
comes from the root verb ‘wazana’ which means to weigh. According to a principle of
sarf the thing which is used to do this action will sound like ‘mif’aal’. If we were to
apply this principle here the item used for the act of weighing would be ‘meewzaan’.
Due to the difficulty found in pronouncing that upon the tonque we replace the ‘waw’
with a ‘yaa’ to make it easier. This simplification is broken down into set principles
known in sarf. Properly applying principles of sarf can sometimes spell the difference
between imaan and kufr. For example Allah said about himself in the Qur’an that he
is ‘al-musaawir’-the fashioner. If someone was to pronounce the ‘waw’ with a fathah
instead of a kasrah the word would mean ‘al-musaawar’-the fashioned one (the one
fashioned by another). Of course the ignorant one making this mistake would be
excused but this simply shows you the importance of sarf in the Arabic language.

III. Balaghah: It is a science dealing with the eloquence of the Arabic language and
how to convey proper meanings according to the situation. Balaghah also deals with
the meanings of words and they take shape in their different usage. Balaghah is
essential in fully understanding the I’jaaz (miraculous) nature of the quran. An
example of balaghah may be taken from the Qur’an. Allah the most high said in surah
al ankabut, “alif laam meem. Do people think that they will be left alone saying,” we
believe” and will not be tested with fitnah? Certainly those before them were tested
with fitnah-so that Allah may make it known those were truthful and make it known
who are the liars." In this noble ayah allah said “so that allah may make it known
those who were truthful” in this part of the ayah allah used the past tense verb
‘sadaquu’ which indicates that they were truthful in the past so the test and trial only
made apparent that which was already there In the past-truthfulness. Allah then said,
“and to make it known those who are liars” in this part of the ayah Allah speaks
about those who didn’t pass the test as being liars. Here he used the word’
kaadhibeen’. In the science of balaghah we learn that this descriptive word-or sifah
implies an established state of the person who is described with this quality. Allah
spoke about the Jews and how they disbelieved in some of the prophets and some
they even killed. This was mentioned in the past tense in surah al baqarah. However
when we look at the ayah we see a special rule of balaghah that gives us more
meaning that what is found in the English translation. Allah said about them, “fa
fareeqan kadh’dhabtum wa fareeqan taq’tuluun.” “So a group of them you denied
and a group of them you killed.” Allah spoke about them saying that they denied a
group of the prophets. He used the past tense verb kadh’dhabtum. However we find
in the end of the ayah he said that some of them they killed by using the PRESENT
TENSE verb ‘taq’tuluun’. In the science of balaghah we learn that if a present tense
verb is used in a past tense context it then signifies what is called ‘istimraar’ or
continuance. Therefore the meaning of this ayah in the context of balaghah is that
the jews used to deny and kill the prophets and that they will continue to kill-in this
case killing the followers of the prophets way and true path. This is mentioned in
tafseer of al aluusee and in tafseer ibn sa’uud.

Learning Arabic-were do I start?

This depends on you. What do you wish to do with your knowledge of Arabic? A boxer
will do a workout of a boxer to prepare for a fight. A runner will do a workout that
enables him to win his race. If a runner does the workout of a boxer he will not
achieve his goal of winning a race. And likewise the boxer who does the workout of a
runner will not have the strength to win his fight. So looking at it with this view you
must ask yourself, what do I want to do with Arabic? If you wish to read the paper
only perhaps the advises listed here will not be a big benefit to you. And likewise the
same for the one who only wishes to become a doctor or chemist in an Arabic
speaking country. If your reason for learning Arabic is to understand the words of
your creator and words of your prophet (saw) and the knowledge that comes from the
books and tongues of the ulema then this advice should be of some benefit in sha’
allah.

Listed below are some concepts to ponder upon ·

 You must understand Arabic in Arabic being a self-translator is not the goal ·
 There is no ‘one book ‘ that will teach you all of what you need to know of
Arabic.
 Non-Arabs have been learning Arabic for over 1,400 years from Africa to
Indonesia so it is incorrect to assume that we cant learn as they did in the
past.
 The traditional method of learning Arabic is tried and true and we are in no
need of new ways to learn the language. That involves complex systems and
tests.
 You will not learn Arabic by simply taking one part of the plan. What I mean is
that if you learn grammar only you will not know Arabic. And if you learn new
vocabulary only you will not really know Arabic. Rather you must take all of it.
Where to begin, that is the question?

The reality is that it is very difficult to learn Arabic in the west without a good
teacher, determination, time, Arabs or Arabic speaking brothers to mix with and learn
from association. It is my personal opinion that one should begin with a basic lesson
in sarf from the book ‘binaa al-afa’aal’. Learning sarf in the beginning is the best
thing for non-Arabs. In fact this is way Arabic is still taught in turkey, India, and
Pakistan and other non Arab Muslim countries. Learning basic sarf will assist the
person in utilizing his dictionary properly, which in this time of learning he will have
as his constant companion. (Note: the best dictionary in Arabic to English is Hans
wehr without argument) the student should learn the basic verb patterns and basic
skills in using the dictionary. After this, he will be ready to learn more and look up
words with relative ease.

The student should now learn basic grammar. The best book in this area for
beginners is the book ‘al-ajrumiyyah’. It is a small book outlining the fundamentals of
grammar that are indispensable in understanding Arabic. There are some brothers
that have learned ‘al-ajrumiyyah’ and grasped concepts that the 3rd year college
student studying Arabic couldn’t. One should study this book with a good teacher who
will make him understand the fundamentals of the book without going into detailed
discussions of grammar issues. As we said earlier, learning grammar is not enough,
so you must also learn how to pick up words to increase your vocabulary. This part is
the most time consuming, sometimes taking years to develop. Here are some
practical advises in this regard:

 You must read as much as you can. Start by reading small books on different
issues in Arabic. Take a notepad and write the new words down. When you
look up a word in the dictionary, underline it with a pencil. If you look up the
word again in the future and see that you marked it with your pencil, you must
memorize that word, as you will more than likely see it again and again. Don’t
write the meanings of the words in English down in your book that you are
reading. That is because you only read the meaning and not the actual word in
Arabic this way.
 You must also learn through listening. In this way you learn how Arabic is
spoken and how certain ideas are conveyed. The best thing is to listen and act
as if you understand everything you hear. If you cant find a speaker giving a
talk then buy some tapes of the ulema and tulaab ul ilm. Some of the clearest
speakers are Shaykh Muhammad al-Uthaymin, shaykh al albani , shaykh
Muhammad mukhtar ash-shinqiti, and shaykh Saalih aal ash-shaykh. It is also
advisable to listen to tapes of those who are not so clear to gain mastery in
listening skills. Some of the best ones for that are shaykh Abdul-Aziz ibn Baz
and shaykh Jibreen & Shaykh A'id al-Qarni
 Listen to the quran attempting to understand.
 Try to understand the Arabic language in Arabic. Don’t be like some people
who only wish to translate everything into their own native tongue. This will
take time but it is very important and will cause you to understand Arabic as it
is.
 Talk as much as you can to those Arabs who will correct you and help you in
learning.
 The most important thing is to always read. If you don’t read you will not gain
mastery over the language. You must read even if you don’t want to. Reading
will give you a glimpse into the various sciences of the deen and increase your
vocabulary
  In the beginning make your primary focus understanding. Most of us will know
more words that we can even think to mention in a conversation with an Arab.
The same goes for English.
 In learning Arabic, try to test yourself by gauging your progress.

Level 1/ reading and understanding the book qisas an-nabiyyeen first three months

Level 2/ reading and understanding the book al aqeedah as-saheehah wa ma

yudaduha by shaykh bin baz rahimahullah second three-month period

Level 3/ reading and understanding tafseer ibn katheer third three month period.

Level 4/ reading and understanding fath al majeed sharh kitab at-tawheed. Forth
three month period.

Level 5/ reading and understanding al-fawa’id by ibn al qayyim. Fifth three month
period

Level 6/ reading and understanding hilyah taalibil-ilm by shaykh bakr abu zaid. Sixth
three month period. Many may disagree with the books listed in each level but I
firmly believe that a person can understand these books (except some vocabulary)
after 18 months.

Stay away from English books and lectures. Cutting your ties with them will give you
more determination to learn. Advanced study As for an advanced study of Arabic, one
must traverse the following path

 In grammar - Start with the book ‘at-tuhfah as-sanniyyah bi sharhil-

muqqadimatil- ajrumiyyah’. This book is perhaps the best explanation of al-
ajrumiyyah. After this book, learn the book, ‘ sharh qatr an-nada’ by ibn
hishaam. After that if one likes he may study alfiyyah ibn maalik. Another
good book to read is ‘jaami’ duroos al arabiyyah’
 In sarf - Start with the book ‘binaa’ al af’aal’. After that, move on to the book,
‘al maqsood’. For more advanced study, learn the poem in sarf entitled,
‘laamiyah al af’aal’by ibn maalik.
 In balaghah - Start with the book ‘al-balaghah al-waadihah’. After that one
may study ‘uqood az-zimaam’ by as-suyooti. Perhaps the best books to read
after the book of Allah - to gain strength in the language are the books of ibn
al qayyim and ibn Rajab al hambali. Don’t rely on any one book to learn
Arabic. The madinah books are not enough in my opinion. Take this advice
and seek the tawfeeq of Allah, you should see some progress in sha Allah.

Allah knows Best

Vocabulary Series I: The Human Body

After a long pause, the Arabic Class notes blog is alive again. This time,
we're starting with a Vocabulary series to present a few words of
Arabic everyday. I will try and give examples of usage as much as
possible. If you are intereseted in learning about certain aspects of the
language more, please send us an email at webmaster@ sarnia-
muslims.com (no spaces).

Additionally, I'll start posting occasional podcasts (audio) of the Arabic

class as time permits.

‫ َر أس‬Head
‫ َيد‬Hand
‫ َقَدم‬Foot
‫ َوْج ه‬Face
‫ َج ِبين‬Forehead
‫ َش ْعر‬Hair
‫ أْنف‬Nose
‫ ُأُذن‬Ear
‫ ِس ن‬Tooth
‫ َعْين‬Eye
‫ َصْدر‬Chest
‫ َقْلب‬Heart
‫ اْصَبع‬Finger
‫ ِلَس ان‬Tongue
‫ َش َفَتْين‬Lips
‫ َخ ْلف‬Back
‫ َبَطن‬Tummy
‫ معدة‬Stomach

Posted by webmaster at 08:11 AM

May 04, 2003 : 2 Rabiul_Awal 1424 Hijriah

Converting Singular to Plural - Feminine

Today's lesson illustrates that its much easier to create plurals of

feminine words. Remember you had to add a taa marbootah to the end
of a masculine singular word to convert it to a feminine singular? This
is very similar. All you really have to do to a word is add an alif and a
taa at the end of a masculine word to convert it into a feminine plural.
Feminine words are not affected by the irregular words when creating
plurals like the masculine words. There are some exceptions but they
are not very common. We will use the same list of words we've been
using for one last time in this example:

‫ ُمَهْنِدسة‬- Muhandisa - Engineer - ‫مهندسات‬

‫ ُمَدِّر سة‬- Mudarrisa - Teacher - ‫مدرسات‬

‫ َوِزْيرة‬- Wazeera - Minister - ‫وزيرات‬

‫ َطِبْيبة‬- Tabeeba - Doctor - ‫طبيبات‬

‫ َفَّنانة‬- Fannana - Artist - ‫فنانات‬

‫ َنَّج ارة‬- Najjara - Carpenter - ‫نجارات‬

‫ ُمَح اِس بة‬- Muhaasiba - Accountant - ‫محاسبات‬

‫ ُمَوَّظفة‬- Muwazzafa - Employee - ‫موظفات‬

‫ ُمَصِّورة‬- Musawwira - Photographer - ‫مصورات‬

‫ ُمَح اِمية‬- Muhaameea - Lawyer - ‫محاميات‬

‫ ُمَتْرِج مة‬- Mutarjima - Translator - ‫مترجمات‬

‫ ُمِدْيرة‬- Mudeera - Manager - ‫مديرات‬

‫ ِسِكْر ِتْيرة‬- Sekerteera - Secretary - ‫سكرتيرات‬

‫ َكاِتبة‬- Kaatiba - Writer or Clerk - ‫كاتبات‬

‫ ُمَر اِقبة‬- Muraaqiba - Supervisor - ‫مراقبات‬

‫ َطاِلبة‬- Taliba - Student - ‫طالبات‬

‫ ِتْلِميذة‬- Tilmeeza - Student - ‫تلميذات‬

‫ َخ َّياطة‬- Khayyata - Tailor - ‫خياطات‬

‫ ُمِضْيفة‬- Mudheefa - Airsteward - ‫مضيفات‬

‫ َباِئعة‬- Baiia - Salesman - ‫بائعات‬

‫ َمْنُدوبة‬- Mandooba - Representative - ‫مندوبات‬

‫ َح َّالقة‬- Hallaqa - Hairdresser - ‫حالقات‬

‫ ُمَمِّر ضة‬- Mumarrida - Nurse - ‫ممرضات‬

‫ َمِرْيضة‬- Mareeda - Patient - ‫مريضات‬

‫ َفَّر انة‬- Farraana - Baker - ‫فرانات‬

‫ َفَّر اشة‬- Farraasha - Office Boy - ‫فراشات‬

‫ ُمَش ِّغلة‬- Mushaghila - Operator - ‫مشغالت‬

‫ ُمَدِّر بة‬- Mudarriba - Coach - ‫مدربات‬

‫ َعاِملة‬- Aamila - Worker - ‫عامالت‬

‫ َجَّز ارة‬- Jazzara - Butcher - ‫جزارات‬

‫ َس اِئقة‬- Saaiqa - Driver - ‫سائقات‬

‫ َطَّباخة‬- Tabbakha - Cook - ‫طباخات‬

‫ َر َّس امة‬- Rassama - Painter - ‫رسامات‬

‫ َمِلكة‬- Malika - King - ‫ملكات‬

‫ َأِمْيرة‬- Ameera - Prince - ‫أميرات‬

‫ َش ْيخة‬- Shaikha - Sheikh - ‫شيخات‬

‫ َر ِئْيسة‬- Raeesa - President - ‫رئيسات‬

‫ ُجْنِدية‬- Jundia - Soldier - ‫جنديات‬

‫ َش اِهدة‬- Shahida - Witness - ‫ شاهدتين‬- ‫شاهدتان‬

‫ َمْبُس وطة‬- Mabsoota - Happy - ‫مبسوطات‬

‫ ُمْمَتازة‬- Mumtaaza - Excellent - ‫ممتازات‬

‫ َكِبْيرة‬- Kabeera - Big - ‫كبري‬

ٰ

‫ َصِغْيرة‬- Sagheera - Small - ‫صغري‬

ٰ

‫ َلِطْيفة‬- Lateefa - Nice - ‫لطيفات‬

‫ َواِس عة‬- Wasiia - Wide or Large - ‫واسعات‬

‫ َجِمْيلة‬- Jameela - Beautiful - ‫جميالت‬

‫ َقِبْيحة‬- Qabeeha - Ugly - ‫قبيحات‬

‫ َجِدْيدة‬- Jadeeda - New - ‫جديدات‬

‫ َقِدْيمة‬- Qadeema - Old - ‫قديمات‬

‫ َناِج حة‬- Naajiha - Successful - ‫ناجحات‬

‫ َفاِش لة‬- Faashila - Unsuccessful - ‫فاشالت‬

‫ َأِمْينة‬- Ameena - Honest - ‫أمينات‬

‫ َصاِدقة‬- Saadiqa - Truthful - ‫صادقات‬

‫ ِمْهِملة‬- Mihmila - Careless - ‫مهمالت‬

‫ َح ِرْيصة‬- Hareesa - Careful - ‫حريصات‬

‫ ُمْجَتِهدة‬- Mujtahida - Hardworking - ‫مجتهدات‬

‫ َش ِرسة‬- Sharisa - Aggressive - ‫شرسات‬

‫ َكُس ْولة‬- Kasoola - Lazy - ‫كسوالت‬

‫ َنِشْيطة‬- Nasheeta - Active - ‫نشيطات‬

‫ َبِدْينة‬- Badeena - Fat - ‫بدينات‬

‫ َنِح ْيفة‬- Naheefa - Thin or Slim - ‫نحيفات‬

‫ َح ِزْينة‬- Hazeena - Sad - ‫حزينات‬

‫ َواِضحة‬- Wadiha - Clear or Obvious - ‫واضحات‬

‫ َغاِمضة‬- Ghamida - Unclear or Obscure - ‫غامضات‬

‫ َباِرعة‬- Baariia - Skillful - ‫بارعات‬

‫ َماِهرة‬- Mahira - Skillful - ‫ماهرات‬

‫ ُمْبِدعة‬- Mubdiia - Creator or Inventor - ‫مبدعات‬

‫ ُمَخاِدعة‬- Mukhaadiia - Cheater - ‫مخادعات‬

‫ َمَدِّخنة‬- Mudakhina - Smoker - ‫مدخنات‬

‫ ُمَهَّذبة‬- Muhazziba - Well mannered - ‫مهذبات‬

‫ ُمْنِتجة‬- Muntija - Producer or Maker - ‫منتجات‬

‫ ُمَخ ِّر بة‬- Mukharriba - Destroyer - ‫مخبرات‬

Posted by webmaster at 10:52 PM

Converting Singular to Plural - Masculine

Today's lesson concentrates on demonstrating how to create plurals in

the masculine form. These nouns and adjectives are the same as the
ones we have been using for several weeks to illustrate how the Arabic
grammar works. Most Arabic singulars can be easily converted to
plurals by adding a yaa and a noon to the end of the word. There are
numerous irregular words in the Arabic language that make it difficult
to ascertain what the plural of a word is. When dealing with these
irregular words you simply have to know what the plural is since it
doesn't follow any particular grammar rule. In the next few lessons we
will examin as many of these irregular words as we possibly can. The
next lesson will convert these same words to Feminine Plural form. For
now, lets make sure we learn the following masculine plurals. You can
easily recognize the irregular words from the list belwo, since they
appear with only one plural form.

‫ ُمَهْنِدس‬- Muhandis - Engineer - ‫ مهندسون‬- ‫مهندسين‬

‫ ُمَدِّر س‬- Mudarris - Teacher - ‫ مدرسون‬- ‫مدرسين‬

‫ َوِزْير‬- Wazeer - Minister - ‫ُوَز َر اء‬

‫ َطِبْيب‬- Tabeeb - Doctor - ‫َأِطَّباء‬

‫ َفَّنان‬- Fannan - Artist - ‫ فنانون‬- ‫فنانين‬

‫ َنَّج ار‬- Najjar - Carpenter - ‫ نجارون‬- ‫نجارين‬

‫ ُمَح اِس ب‬- Muhaasib - Accountant - ‫ محاسبون‬- ‫محاسبين‬

‫موظفين ‪ -‬موظفون ‪ُ - Muwazzaf - Employee -‬مَوَّظف‬

‫مصورين ‪ -‬مصورون ‪ُ - Musawwir - Photographer -‬مَصِّور‬

‫محاميين ‪ -‬محاميون ‪ُ - Muhaamee - Lawyer -‬مَح اِمي‬

‫مترجمين ‪ -‬مترجمون ‪ُ - Mutarjim - Translator -‬مَتْرِج م‬

‫مديرين ‪ -‬مديرون ‪ُ - Mudeer - Manager -‬مِدْير‬

‫سكرترين ‪ -‬سكرتيرون ‪ِ - Sekerteer - Secretary -‬سِكْر ِتْير‬

‫َكَتَبة ‪َ - Kaatib - Writer or Clerk -‬كاِتب‬

‫مراقبين ‪ -‬مراقبون ‪ُ - Muraaqib - Supervisor -‬مَر اِقب‬

‫َطَلَبة ‪َ - Talib - Student -‬طاِلب‬

‫َتَالِميذ ‪ِ - Tilmeez - Student -‬تْلِميذ‬

‫خياطين ‪ -‬خياطون ‪َ - Khayyat - Tailor -‬خ َّياط‬

‫مضيفين ‪ -‬مضيفون ‪ُ - Mudheef - Airsteward -‬مِضْيف‬

‫بائعين ‪ -‬بائعون ‪َ - Baii - Salesman -‬باِئع‬

‫مندوبين ‪ -‬مندوبون ‪َ - Mandoob - Representative -‬مْنُدوب‬

‫حالقين ‪ -‬حالقون ‪َ - Hallaq - Hairdresser -‬ح َّالق‬

‫ممرضين ‪ -‬ممرضون ‪ُ - Mumarrid - Nurse -‬مَمِّر ض‬

‫مريضين ‪ -‬مريضون ‪َ - Mareed - Patient -‬مِرْيض‬

‫فنانين ‪ -‬فنانون ‪َ - Farraan - Baker -‬فَّر ان‬

‫فراشين ‪ -‬فراشون ‪َ - Farraash - Office Boy -‬فَّر اش‬

‫مشغلين ‪ -‬مشغلون ‪ُ - Mushaghil - Operator -‬مَش ِّغل‬

‫مدربين ‪ -‬مدربون ‪ُ - Mudarrib - Coach -‬مَدِّر ب‬

‫عاملين ‪ -‬عاملون ‪َ - Aamil - Worker -‬عاِمل‬

‫جزارين ‪ -‬جزارون ‪َ - Jazzar - Butcher -‬جَّز ار‬

‫سائقين ‪ -‬سائقون ‪َ - Saaiq - Driver -‬س اِئق‬

‫طباخين ‪ -‬طباخون ‪َ - Tabbakh - Cook -‬طَّباخ‬

‫رسامين ‪ -‬رسامون ‪َ - Rassam - Painter -‬ر َّس ام‬

‫ُمُلوك ‪َ - Malik - King -‬مِلك‬

‫ُأَمَر اء ‪َ - Ameer - Prince -‬أِمْير‬

‫ُش ُيوخ ‪َ - Shaikh - Sheikh -‬ش ْيخ‬

‫ُر ُؤَس اء ‪َ - Raees - President -‬ر ِئْيس‬

‫ُجُنود ‪ُ - Jundi - Soldier -‬جْنِدي‬

‫ُش ُهود ‪َ - Shahid - Witness -‬ش اِهد‬

‫مبسوطين ‪ -‬مبسوطون ‪َ - Mabsoot - Happy -‬مْبُس وط‬

‫ممتازين ‪ -‬ممتازون ‪ُ - Mumtaaz - Excellent -‬مْمَتاز‬

‫كبار ‪َ - Kabeer - Big -‬كِبْير‬

‫صغار ‪َ - Sagheer - Small -‬صِغْير‬

‫لطائف ‪َ - Lateef - Nice -‬لِطْيف‬

‫واسعين ‪ -‬واسعون ‪َ - Wasii - Wide or Large -‬واِس ع‬

‫جميلين ‪ -‬جميلون ‪َ - Jameel - Beautiful -‬جِمْيل‬

‫قبيحين ‪ -‬قبيحون ‪َ - Qabeeh - Ugly -‬قِبْيح‬

‫جديدين ‪ -‬جديدون ‪َ - Jadeed - New -‬جِدْيد‬

‫قديمين ‪ -‬قديمون ‪َ - Qadeem - Old -‬قِدْيم‬

‫ناجحين ‪ -‬ناجحون ‪َ - Naajih - Successful -‬ناِج ح‬

‫فاشلين ‪ -‬فاشلون ‪َ - Faashil - Unsuccessful -‬فاِش ل‬

‫أمينين ‪ -‬أمينون ‪َ - Ameen - Honest -‬أِمْين‬

‫صادقين ‪ -‬صادقون ‪َ - Saadiq - Truthful -‬صاِدق‬

‫مهملين ‪ -‬مهملون ‪ِ - Mihmil - Careless -‬مْهِمل‬

‫حريصين ‪ -‬حريصون ‪َ - Harees - Careful -‬ح ِرْيص‬

‫مجتهدين ‪ -‬مجتهدون ‪ُ - Mujtahid - Hardworking -‬مْجَتِهد‬

‫شرسين ‪ -‬شرسون ‪َ - Sharis - Aggressive -‬ش ِرس‬

‫كسولين ‪ -‬كسولون ‪َ - Kasool - Lazy -‬كُس ْول‬

‫نشيطين ‪ -‬نشيطين ‪َ - Nasheet - Active -‬نِشْيط‬

‫بدينين ‪ -‬بدينون ‪َ - Badeen - Fat -‬بِدْين‬

‫نحيفين ‪ -‬نحيفون ‪َ - Naheef - Thin or Slim -‬نِح ْيف‬

‫حزينين ‪ -‬حزينون ‪َ - Hazeen - Sad -‬ح ِزْين‬

‫واضحين ‪ -‬واضحون ‪َ - Wadih - Clear or Obvious -‬واِضح‬

‫غامضين ‪ -‬غامضون ‪َ - Ghamid - Unclear or Obscure -‬غاِمض‬

‫ َباِرع‬- Baarii - Skillful - ‫ بارعون‬- ‫بارعين‬

‫ َماِهر‬- Mahir - Skillful - ‫ ماهرون‬- ‫ماهرين‬

‫ ُمْبِدع‬- Mubdii - Creator or Inventor - ‫ مبدعون‬- ‫مبدعين‬

‫ ُمَخاِدع‬- Mukhaadii - Cheater - ‫ مخادعون‬- ‫مخادعين‬

‫ َمَدِّخن‬- Mudakhin - Smoker - ‫ مدخنون‬- ‫مدخنين‬

‫ ُمَهَّذب‬- Muhazzib - Well mannered - ‫ مهذبون‬- ‫مهذبين‬

‫ ُمْنِتج‬- Muntij - Producer or Maker - ‫ منتجون‬- ‫منتجين‬

‫ ُمَخ ِّر ب‬- Mukharrib - Destroyer - ‫ مخربون‬- ‫مخربين‬

Posted by webmaster at 10:33 PM

April 21, 2003 : 18 Safar 1424 Hijriah

Converting Singular to a Dual - Feminine

Today's lesson is very similar to the last lesson. We are learning to

convert a singular to a dual. Only this time we are dealing with
feminine nouns and adjectives. The rule in the Arabic grammar is the
same. We add an alif and a noon or a yaa and a noon to the end of the
word. Remember we already added a ta marbootah to the end of the
word to make it into a feminine nound or adjective. So in essence, we
are really adding a ta, an alif and a noon to the end of the word or a ta,
a yaa and a noon to make a feminine dual noun or adjective. Next
lessons, inshaAllah, we'll learn how to make plural masculine and
plural feminine nouns and adjectives.

‫ ُمَهْنِدسة‬- Muhandisa - Engineer - ‫ مهندسَتْين‬- ‫مهندسَتان‬

‫ ُمَدِّر سة‬- Mudarrisa - Teacher - ‫ مدرسَتْين‬- ‫مدرسَتان‬

‫وزيرَتان ‪ -‬وزيرَتْين ‪َ - Wazeera - Minister -‬وِزْيرة‬

‫طبيبَتان ‪ -‬طبيبَتْين ‪َ - Tabeeba - Doctor -‬طِبْيبة‬

‫فنانَتان ‪ -‬فنانَتْين ‪َ - Fannana - Artist -‬فَّنانة‬

‫نجارتان ‪ -‬نجارتين ‪َ - Najjara - Carpenter -‬نَّج ارة‬

‫محاسبتان ‪ -‬محاسبتين ‪ُ - Muhaasiba - Accountant -‬مَح اِس بة‬

‫موظفتان ‪ -‬موظفتين ‪ُ - Muwazzafa - Employee -‬مَوَّظفة‬

‫مصورتان ‪ -‬مصورتين ‪ُ - Musawwira - Photographer -‬مَصِّورة‬

‫محاميتان ‪ -‬محاميتين ‪ُ - Muhaameea - Lawyer -‬مَح اِمية‬

‫مترجمتان ‪ -‬مترجمتين ‪ُ - Mutarjima - Translator -‬مَتْرِج مة‬

‫مديرتان ‪ -‬مديرتين ‪ُ - Mudeera - Manager -‬مِدْيرة‬

‫سكرتيرتان ‪ -‬سكرتيرتين ‪ِ - Sekerteera - Secretary -‬سِكْر ِتْيرة‬

‫كاتبتان ‪ -‬كاتبتين ‪َ - Kaatiba - Writer or Clerk -‬كاِتبة‬

‫مراقبتان ‪ -‬مراقبتين ‪ُ - Muraaqiba - Supervisor -‬مَر اِقبة‬

‫طالبتان ‪ -‬طالبتين ‪َ - Taliba - Student -‬طاِلبة‬

‫تلميذتان ‪ -‬تلميذتين ‪ِ - Tilmeeza - Student -‬تْلِميذة‬

‫خياطتان ‪ -‬خياطتين ‪َ - Khayyata - Tailor -‬خ َّياطة‬

‫مضيفتان ‪ -‬مضيفتين ‪ُ - Mudheefa - Airsteward -‬مِضْيفة‬

‫بائعتان ‪ -‬بائعتين ‪َ - Baiia - Salesman -‬باِئعة‬

‫مندوبتان ‪ -‬مندوبتين ‪َ - Mandooba - Representative -‬مْنُدوبة‬

‫حالقتان ‪ -‬حالقتين ‪َ - Hallaqa - Hairdresser -‬ح َّالقة‬

‫ممرضتان ‪ -‬ممرضتين ‪ُ - Mumarrida - Nurse -‬مَمِّر ضة‬

‫مريضتان ‪ -‬مريضتين ‪َ - Mareeda - Patient -‬مِرْيضة‬

‫فرانتان ‪ -‬فرانتين ‪َ - Farraana - Baker -‬فَّر انة‬

‫فراشتان ‪ -‬فراشتين ‪َ - Farraasha - Office Boy -‬فَّر اشة‬

‫مشغلتان ‪ -‬مشغلتين ‪ُ - Mushaghila - Operator -‬مَش ِّغلة‬

‫مدربتان ‪ -‬مدربتين ‪ُ - Mudarriba - Coach -‬مَدِّر بة‬

‫عاملتان ‪ -‬عاملتين ‪َ - Aamila - Worker -‬عاِملة‬

‫جزارتان ‪ -‬جزارتين ‪َ - Jazzara - Butcher -‬جَّز ارة‬

‫سائقتان ‪ -‬سائقتين ‪َ - Saaiqa - Driver -‬س اِئقة‬

‫طباختان ‪ -‬طباختين ‪َ - Tabbakha - Cook -‬طَّباخة‬

‫رسامتان ‪ -‬رسامتين ‪َ - Rassama - Painter -‬ر َّس امة‬

‫ملكتان ‪ -‬ملكتين ‪َ - Malika - King -‬مِلكة‬

‫أميرتان ‪ -‬أميرتين ‪َ - Ameera - Prince -‬أِمْيرة‬

‫شيختان ‪ -‬شيختين ‪َ - Shaikha - Sheikh -‬ش ْيخة‬

‫رئيستان ‪ -‬رئيستين ‪َ - Raeesa - President -‬ر ِئْيسة‬

‫جنديتان ‪ -‬جنديتين ‪ُ - Jundia - Soldier -‬جْنِدية‬

‫شاهدتان ‪ -‬شاهدتين ‪َ - Shahida - Witness -‬ش اِهدة‬

‫مبسوطتان ‪ -‬مبسوطتين ‪َ - Mabsoota - Happy -‬مْبُس وطة‬

‫ممتازتان ‪ -‬ممتازتين ‪ُ - Mumtaaza - Excellent -‬مْمَتازة‬

‫كبيرتان ‪ -‬كبيرتين ‪َ - Kabeera - Big -‬كِبْيرة‬

‫صغيرتان ‪ -‬صغيرتين ‪َ - Sagheera - Small -‬صِغْيرة‬

‫لطيفتان ‪ -‬لطيفتين ‪َ - Lateefa - Nice -‬لِطْيفة‬

‫واسعتان ‪ -‬واسعتين ‪َ - Wasiia - Wide or Large -‬واِس عة‬

‫جميلتان ‪ -‬جميلتين ‪َ - Jameela - Beautiful -‬جِمْيلة‬

‫قبيحتان ‪ -‬قبيحتين ‪َ - Qabeeha - Ugly -‬قِبْيحة‬

‫جديدتان ‪ -‬جديدتين ‪َ - Jadeeda - New -‬جِدْيدة‬

‫قديمتان ‪ -‬قديمتين ‪َ - Qadeema - Old -‬قِدْيمة‬

‫ناجحتان ‪ -‬ناجحتين ‪َ - Naajiha - Successful -‬ناِج حة‬

‫فاشلتان ‪ -‬فاشلتين ‪َ - Faashila - Unsuccessful -‬فاِش لة‬

‫أمينتان ‪ -‬أمينتين ‪َ - Ameena - Honest -‬أِمْينة‬

‫صادقتان ‪ -‬صادقتين ‪َ - Saadiqa - Truthful -‬صاِدقة‬

‫مهملتان ‪ -‬مهملتين ‪ِ - Mihmila - Careless -‬مْهِملة‬

‫حريصتان ‪ -‬حريصتين ‪َ - Hareesa - Careful -‬ح ِرْيصة‬

‫مجتهدتان ‪ -‬مجتهدتين ‪ُ - Mujtahida - Hardworking -‬مْجَتِهدة‬

‫شرستان ‪ -‬شرستين ‪َ - Sharisa - Aggressive -‬ش ِرسة‬

‫كسولتان ‪ -‬كسولتين ‪َ - Kasoola - Lazy -‬كُس ْولة‬

‫نشيطتان ‪ -‬نشيطتين ‪َ - Nasheeta - Active -‬نِشْيطة‬

‫ َبِدْينة‬- Badeena - Fat - ‫ بدينتين‬- ‫بدينتان‬

‫ َنِح ْيفة‬- Naheefa - Thin or Slim - ‫ نحيفتين‬- ‫نحيفتان‬

‫ َح ِزْينة‬- Hazeena - Sad - ‫ حزينتين‬- ‫حزينتان‬

‫ َواِضحة‬- Wadiha - Clear or Obvious - ‫ واضحتين‬- ‫واضحتان‬

‫ َغاِمضة‬- Ghamida - Unclear or Obscure - ‫ غامضتين‬- ‫غامضتان‬

‫ َباِرعة‬- Baariia - Skillful - ‫ بارعتين‬- ‫بارعتان‬

‫ َماِهرة‬- Mahira - Skillful - ‫ ماهرتين‬- ‫ماهرتان‬

‫ ُمْبِدعة‬- Mubdiia - Creator or Inventor - ‫ مبدعتين‬- ‫مبدعتان‬

‫ ُمَخاِدعة‬- Mukhaadiia - Cheater - ‫ مخادعتين‬- ‫مخادعتان‬

‫ َمَدِّخنة‬- Mudakhina - Smoker - ‫ مدخنتين‬- ‫مدخنتان‬

‫ ُمَهَّذبة‬- Muhazziba - Well mannered - ‫ مهذبتين‬- ‫مهذبتان‬

‫ ُمْنِتجة‬- Muntija - Producer or Maker - ‫ منتجتين‬- ‫منتجتان‬

‫ ُمَخ ِّر بة‬- Mukharriba - Destroyer - ‫ مخبرتين‬- ‫مخبرتان‬

Posted by webmaster at 09:58 PM

April 17, 2003 : 13 Safar 1424 Hijriah

Converting Singular to a Dual - Masculine

Today we learn to convert masculine singular to a masculine duals.

This rule applies to nouns and adjectives. Arabic has a singular, dual
and plural for everything. And its different for masculine and feminine.
I am using the same words that I have used in the past two lessons to
illustrate how adding an alif and noon or yaa and noon combination
(depending on the sentence structure) converts a singular into a dual.
In the lessons that follow, I will use the same words so illustrate the
dual for female and plurals for both male and female. After that we'll
look at the verbs, inshaAllah. This lesson should clarify how to make
dual masculine nouns and adjectives and reinforce the learning of the
vocabulary. Make sure you know these very well before we move to
the next lessons.

‫ ُمَهْنِدس‬- Muhandis - Engineer - ‫ مهندَس ْين‬- ‫مهندسان‬

‫ ُمَدِّر س‬- Mudarris - Teacher - ‫ مدرَس ْين‬- ‫مدرسان‬

‫ َوِزْير‬- Wazeer - Minister - ‫ وزيَر ْين‬- ‫وزيران‬

‫ َطِبْيب‬- Tabeeb - Doctor - ‫ طبيَبْين‬- ‫طبيبان‬

‫ َفَّنان‬- Fannan - Artist - ‫ فناَنْين‬- ‫فنانان‬

‫ َنَّج ار‬- Najjar - Carpenter - ‫ نجاَر ْين‬- ‫نجاران‬

‫ ُمَح اِس ب‬- Muhaasib - Accountant - ‫ محاسبين‬- ‫محاسبان‬

‫ ُمَوَّظف‬- Muwazzaf - Employee - ‫ موظفين‬- ‫موظفان‬

‫ ُمَصِّور‬- Musawwir - Photographer - ‫ مصورين‬- ‫مصوران‬

‫ ُمَح اِمي‬- Muhaamee - Lawyer - ‫ محاميين‬- ‫محاميان‬

‫ ُمَتْرِج م‬- Mutarjim - Translator - ‫ مترجمين‬- ‫مترجمان‬

‫ ُمِدْير‬- Mudeer - Manager - ‫ مديرين‬- ‫مديران‬

‫ ِسِكْر ِتْير‬- Sekerteer - Secretary - ‫ سكرتيرين‬- ‫سكرتيران‬

‫ َكاِتب‬- Kaatib - Writer or Clerk - ‫ كاتبين‬- ‫كاتبان‬

‫مراقبان ‪ -‬مراقبين ‪ُ - Muraaqib - Supervisor -‬مَر اِقب‬

‫طالبان ‪ -‬طالبين ‪َ - Talib - Student -‬طاِلب‬

‫تلميذان ‪ -‬تلميذين ‪ِ - Tilmeez - Student -‬تْلِميذ‬

‫خياطان ‪ -‬خياطين ‪َ - Khayyat - Tailor -‬خ َّياط‬

‫مضيفان ‪ -‬مضيفين ‪ُ - Mudheef - Airsteward -‬مِضْيف‬

‫بائعان ‪ -‬بائعين ‪َ - Baii - Salesman -‬باِئع‬

‫مندوبان ‪ -‬مندوبين ‪َ - Mandoob - Representative -‬مْنُدوب‬

‫حالقان ‪ -‬حالقين ‪َ - Hallaq - Hairdresser -‬ح َّالق‬

‫ممرضان ‪ -‬ممرضين ‪ُ - Mumarrid - Nurse -‬مَمِّر ض‬

‫مريضان ‪ -‬مريضين ‪َ - Mareed - Patient -‬مِرْيض‬

‫فرانان ‪ -‬فرانين ‪َ - Farraan - Baker -‬فَّر ان‬

‫فراشان ‪ -‬فراشين ‪َ - Farraash - Office Boy -‬فَّر اش‬

‫مشغالن ‪ -‬مشغلين ‪ُ - Mushaghil - Operator -‬مَش ِّغل‬

‫مدربان ‪ -‬مدربين ‪ُ - Mudarrib - Coach -‬مَدِّر ب‬

‫عامالن ‪ -‬عاملين ‪َ - Aamil - Worker -‬عاِمل‬

‫جزاران ‪ -‬جزارين ‪َ - Jazzar - Butcher -‬جَّز ار‬

‫سائقان ‪ -‬سائقين ‪َ - Saaiq - Driver -‬س اِئق‬

‫طباخان ‪ -‬طباخين ‪َ - Tabbakh - Cook -‬طَّباخ‬

‫رسامان ‪ -‬رسامين ‪َ - Rassam - Painter -‬ر َّس ام‬

‫ملكان ‪ -‬ملكين ‪َ - Malik - King -‬مِلك‬

‫أميران ‪ -‬أميرين ‪َ - Ameer - Prince -‬أِمْير‬

‫شيخان ‪ -‬شيخين ‪َ - Shaikh - Sheikh -‬ش ْيخ‬

‫رئيسان ‪ -‬رئيسين ‪َ - Raees - President -‬ر ِئْيس‬

‫جنديان ‪ -‬جنديين ‪ُ - Jundi - Soldier -‬جْنِدي‬

‫شاهدان ‪ -‬شاهدين ‪َ - Shahid - Witness -‬ش اِهد‬

‫مبسوطان ‪ -‬مبسوطين ‪َ - Mabsoot - Happy -‬مْبُس وط‬

‫ممتازان ‪ -‬ممتازين ‪ُ - Mumtaaz - Excellent -‬مْمَتاز‬

‫كبيران ‪ -‬كبيرين ‪َ - Kabeer - Big -‬كِبْير‬

‫صغيران ‪ -‬صغيرين ‪َ - Sagheer - Small -‬صِغْير‬

‫لطيفان ‪ -‬لطيفين ‪َ - Lateef - Nice -‬لِطْيف‬

‫واسعان ‪ -‬واسعين ‪َ - Wasii - Wide or Large -‬واِس ع‬

‫جميالن ‪ -‬جميلين ‪َ - Jameel - Beautiful -‬جِمْيل‬

‫قبيحان ‪ -‬قبيحين ‪َ - Qabeeh - Ugly -‬قِبْيح‬

‫جديدان ‪ -‬جديدين ‪َ - Jadeed - New -‬جِدْيد‬

‫قديمان ‪ -‬قديمين ‪َ - Qadeem - Old -‬قِدْيم‬

‫ناجحان ‪ -‬ناجحين ‪َ - Naajih - Successful -‬ناِج ح‬

‫فاشالن ‪ -‬فاشلين ‪َ - Faashil - Unsuccessful -‬فاِش ل‬

‫أمينان ‪ -‬أمينين ‪َ - Ameen - Honest -‬أِمْين‬

‫صادقان ‪ -‬صادقين ‪َ - Saadiq - Truthful -‬صاِدق‬

‫مهمالن ‪ -‬مهملين ‪ِ - Mihmil - Careless -‬مْهِمل‬

‫حريصان ‪ -‬حريصين ‪َ - Harees - Careful -‬ح ِرْيص‬

‫مجتهدان ‪ -‬مجتهدين ‪ُ - Mujtahid - Hardworking -‬مْجَتِهد‬

‫شرسان ‪ -‬شرسين ‪َ - Sharis - Aggressive -‬ش ِرس‬

‫كسوالن ‪ -‬كسولين ‪َ - Kasool - Lazy -‬كُس ْول‬

‫نشيطان ‪ -‬نشيطين ‪َ - Nasheet - Active -‬نِشْيط‬

‫بدينان ‪ -‬بدينين ‪َ - Badeen - Fat -‬بِدْين‬

‫نحيفان ‪ -‬نحيفين ‪َ - Naheef - Thin or Slim -‬نِح ْيف‬

‫حزينان ‪ -‬حزينين ‪َ - Hazeen - Sad -‬ح ِزْين‬

‫واضحان ‪ -‬واضحين ‪َ - Wadih - Clear or Obvious -‬واِضح‬

‫غامضان ‪ -‬غامضين ‪َ - Ghamid - Unclear or Obscure -‬غاِمض‬

‫بارعان ‪ -‬بارعين ‪َ - Baarii - Skillful -‬باِرع‬

‫ماهران ‪ -‬ماهرين ‪َ - Mahir - Skillful -‬ماِهر‬

‫مبدعان ‪ -‬مبدعين ‪ُ - Mubdii - Creator or Inventor -‬مْبِدع‬

‫مخادعان ‪ -‬مخادعين ‪ُ - Mukhaadii - Cheater -‬مَخاِدع‬

‫مدخنان ‪ -‬مدخنين ‪َ - Mudakhin - Smoker -‬مَدِّخن‬

‫مهذبان ‪ -‬مهذبين ‪ُ - Muhazzib - Well mannered -‬مَهَّذب‬

‫منتجان ‪ -‬منتجين ‪ُ - Muntij - Producer or Maker -‬مْنِتج‬

‫ ُمَخ ِّر ب‬- Mukharrib - Destroyer - ‫ مخربين‬- ‫مخربان‬

Posted by webmaster at 12:42 AM

April 06, 2003 : 3 Safar 1424 Hijriah

Converting Gender in Nouns and Adjectives

The Arabic language is very precise. Every noun, pronoun, adjective,

and verb is gender and number based: its either used in a male or
female context and its slightly changed for singular, dual and plural
usage. Using it interchangeably doesn't work. This could make the
languge very complex if there was no rules governing how the
grammar works. Thankfully, the Arabic language is very systematic in
nature. The rules of grammar apply uniformly throughout most of the
language. Today's lesson illustrates how to change a noun or adjective
from masculine to feminine and vice versa. The rule is simple: add a ta
marboota at the end of a masculine noun or adjective to make it into a
feminine noun or adjective. The examples below should make it very
clear. Next week we'll discuss how to make duals and plurals,
inshaAllah.

‫ ُمَهْنِدس‬- Muhandis - Engineer - ‫مهندسة‬

‫ ُمَدِّر س‬- Mudarris - Teacher - ‫مدرسة‬

‫ َوِزْير‬- Wazeer - Minister - ‫وزيرة‬

‫ َطِبْيب‬- Tabeeb - Doctor - ‫طبيبة‬

‫ َفَّنان‬- Fannan - Artist - ‫فّنانة‬

‫ َنَّج ار‬- Najjar - Carpenter - ‫نّج ارة‬

‫ ُمَح اِس ب‬- Muhaasib - Accountant - ‫محاسبة‬

‫ ُمَوَّظف‬- Muwazzaf - Employee - ‫موّظفة‬

‫ ُمَصِّور‬- Musawwir - Photographer - ‫مصِّورة‬

‫ ُمَح اِمي‬- Muhaamee - Lawyer - ‫محامية‬

‫ ُمَتْرِج م‬- Mutarjim - Translator - ‫مترجمة‬

‫ ُمِدْير‬- Mudeer - Manager - ‫مديرة‬

‫ ِسِكْر ِتْير‬- Sekerteer - Secretary - ‫سكرتيرة‬

‫ َكاِتب‬- Kaatib - Writer or Clerk - ‫كاتبة‬

‫ ُمَر اِقب‬- Muraaqib - Supervisor - ‫مراقبة‬

‫ َطاِلب‬- Talib - Student - ‫طالبة‬

‫ ِتْلِميذ‬- Tilmeez - Student - ‫تلميذة‬

‫ َخ َّياط‬- Khayyat - Tailor - ‫خّياطة‬

‫ ُمِضْيف‬- Mudheef - Airsteward - ‫مضيفة‬

‫ َباِئع‬- Baii - Salesman - ‫بائعة‬

‫ َمْنُدوب‬- Mandoob - Representative - ‫مندوبة‬

‫ َح َّالق‬- Hallaq - Hairdresser - ‫حّالقة‬

‫ ُمَمِّر ض‬- Mumarrid - Nurse - ‫ممّر ضة‬

‫ َمِرْيض‬- Mareed - Patient - ‫مريضة‬

‫ َفَّر ان‬- Farraan - Baker - ‫فّر انة‬

‫ َفَّر اش‬- Farraash - Office Boy - ‫فّر اشة‬

‫ ُمَش ِّغل‬- Mushaghil - Operator - ‫مشّغلة‬

‫ ُمَدِّر ب‬- Mudarrib - Coach - ‫مدّر بة‬

‫ َعاِمل‬- Aamil - Worker - ‫عاملة‬

‫ َجَّز ار‬- Jazzar - Butcher - ‫جّر ارة‬

‫ َس اِئق‬- Saaiq - Driver - ‫سائقة‬

‫ َطَّباخ‬- Tabbakh - Cook - ‫طّباخة‬

‫ َر َّس ام‬- Rassam - Painter - ‫رّس امة‬

‫ َمِلك‬- Malik - King - ‫ملكة‬

‫ َأِمْير‬- Ameer - Prince - ‫أميرة‬

‫ َش ْيخ‬- Shaikh - Sheikh - ‫شيخة‬

‫ َر ِئْيس‬- Raees - President - ‫رئيسة‬

‫ ُجْنِدي‬- Jundi - Soldier - ‫جندية‬

‫ َش اِهد‬- Shahid - Witness - ‫شاهدة‬

‫ َمْبُس وط‬- Mabsoot - Happy - ‫مبسوطة‬

‫ ُمْمَتاز‬- Mumtaaz - Excellent - ‫ممتازة‬

‫ َكِبْير‬- Kabeer - Big - ‫كبيرة‬

‫ َصِغْير‬- Sagheer - Small - ‫صغيرة‬

‫ َلِطْيف‬- Lateef - Nice - ‫لطيفة‬

‫ َواِس ع‬- Wasii - Wide or Large - ‫واسعة‬

‫ َجِمْيل‬- Jameel - Beautiful - ‫جميلة‬

‫ َقِبْيح‬- Qabeeh - Ugly - ‫قبيحة‬

‫ َجِدْيد‬- Jadeed - New - ‫جديدة‬

‫ َقِدْيم‬- Qadeem - Old - ‫قديمة‬

‫ َناِج ح‬- Naajih - Successful - ‫ناجحة‬

‫ َفاِش ل‬- Faashil - Unsuccessful - ‫فاشلة‬

‫ َأِمْين‬- Ameen - Honest - ‫أمينة‬

‫ َصاِدق‬- Saadiq - Truthful - ‫صادقة‬

‫ ِمْهِمل‬- Mihmil - Careless - ‫مهملة‬

‫ َح ِرْيص‬- Harees - Careful - ‫حريصة‬

‫ ُمْجَتِهد‬- Mujtahid - Hardworking - ‫مجتهدة‬

‫ َش ِرس‬- Sharis - Aggressive - ‫شرسة‬

‫ َكُس ْول‬- Kasool - Lazy - ‫كسولة‬

‫ َنِشْيط‬- Nasheet - Active - ‫نشيطة‬

‫ َبِدْين‬- Badeen - Fat - ‫بدينة‬

‫ َنِح ْيف‬- Naheef - Thin or Slim - ‫نحيفة‬

‫ َح ِزْين‬- Hazeen - Sad - ‫حزينة‬

‫ َواِضح‬- Wadih - Clear or Obvious - ‫واضحة‬

‫ َغاِمض‬- Ghamid - Unclear or Obscure - ‫غامضة‬

‫ َباِرع‬- Baarii - Skillful - ‫بارعة‬

‫ َماِهر‬- Mahir - Skillful - ‫ماهرة‬

‫ ُمْبِدع‬- Mubdii - Creator or Inventor - ‫مبدعة‬

‫ ُمَخاِدع‬- Mukhaadii - Cheater - ‫مخادعة‬

‫ َمَدِّخن‬- Mudakhin - Smoker - ‫مدّخنة‬

‫ ُمَهَّذب‬- Muhazzib - Well mannered - ‫مهّذبة‬

‫ ُمْنِتج‬- Muntij - Producer or Maker - ‫منتجة‬

‫ ُمَخ ِّر ب‬- Mukharrib - Destroyer - ‫مخّر بة‬

Posted by webmaster at 12:31 PM

March 27, 2003 : 23 Muharam 1424 Hijriah

Adjectives and Professions

Sorry for not updating the Arabic Blog for so long, but I have been
pretty busy and it does take a long time to type Arabic since I am not
used to it. InshaAllah, I will try to be more regular from now on. For
today's lesson, I have collected a list of adjectives and professions to
add to your vocabulary. Unfortunately, there is no easy way out of this,
you do have to memorize it to learn it. The easiest way I know to
memorize anything is to write it down a few times, while pronouncing
it. InshaAllah, soon we shall start creating Arabic sentences so we can
speak and write Arabic. We do need some more Nouns, Verbs,
Adjectives and perhaps more importantly some more grammar before
we can do that. For now, learn these below and let me know if you
have any questions by leaving a comment. Good Luck learning Arabic.
Note That all the following adjectives are in the masculine, singular
form. In the coming weeks, when we learn some grammar you will be
able to convert these into combinations of femine, dual as well as
plural forms.

‫ ُمَهْنِدس‬- Muhandis - Engineer

‫ ُمَدِّر س‬- Mudarris - Teacher

‫ َوِزْير‬- Wazeer - Minister

‫ َطِبْيب‬- Tabeeb - Doctor

‫ َفَّنان‬- Fannan - Artist

‫ َنَّج ار‬- Najjar - Carpenter

‫ ُمَح اِس ب‬- Muhaasib - Accountant

‫ ُمَوَّظف‬- Muwazzaf - Employee

‫ ُمَصِّور‬- Musawwir - Photographer

‫ ُمَح اِمي‬- Muhaamee - Lawyer

‫ ُمَتْرِج م‬- Mutarjim - Translator

‫ ُمِدْير‬- Mudeer - Manager

‫ ِسِكْر ِتْير‬- Sekerteer - Secretary

‫ َكاِتب‬- Kaatib - Writer or Clerk

‫ ُمَر اِقب‬- Muraaqib - Supervisor

‫ َطاِلب‬- Talib - Student

‫ ِتْلِميذ‬- Tilmeez - Student

‫ َخ َّياط‬- Khayyat - Tailor

‫ ُمِضْيف‬- Mudheef - Airsteward

‫ َباِئع‬- Baii - Salesman

‫ َمْنُدوب‬- Mandoob - Representative

‫ َح َّالق‬- Hallaq - Hairdresser

‫ ُمَمِّر ض‬- Mumarrid - Nurse

‫ َمِرْيض‬- Mareed - Patient

‫ َفَّر ان‬- Farraan - Baker

‫ َفَّر اش‬- Farraash - Office Boy

‫ ُمَش ِّغل‬- Mushaghil - Operator

‫ ُمَدِّر ب‬- Mudarrib - Coach

‫ َعاِمل‬- Aamil - Worker

‫ َجَّز ار‬- Jazzar - Butcher

‫ َس اِئق‬- Saaiq - Driver

‫ َطَّباخ‬- Tabbakh - Cook

‫ َر َّس ام‬- Rassam - Painter

‫ َمِلك‬- Malik - King

‫ َأِمْير‬- Ameer - Prince

‫ َش ْيخ‬- Shaikh - Sheikh

‫ َر ِئْيس‬- Raees - President

‫ ُجْنِدي‬- Jundi - Soldier

‫ َش اِهد‬- Shahid - Witness

‫ َمْبُس وط‬- Mabsoot - Happy

‫ ُمْمَتاز‬- Mumtaaz - Excellent

‫ َكِبْير‬- Kabeer - Big

‫ َصِغْير‬- Sagheer - Small

‫ َلِطْيف‬- Lateef - Nice

‫ َواِس ع‬- Wasii - Wide or Large

‫ َجِمْيل‬- Jameel - Beautiful

‫ َقِبْيح‬- Qabeeh - Ugly

‫ َجِدْيد‬- Jadeed - New

‫ َقِدْيم‬- Qadeem - Old

‫ َناِج ح‬- Naajih - Successful

‫ َفاِش ل‬- Faashil - Unsuccessful

‫ َأِمْين‬- Ameen - Honest

‫ َصاِدق‬- Saadiq - Truthful

‫ ِمْهِمل‬- Mihmil - Careless

‫ َح ِرْيص‬- Harees - Careful

‫ ُمْجَتِهد‬- Mujtahid - Hardworking

‫ َش ِرس‬- Sharis - Aggressive

‫ َكُس ْول‬- Kasool - Lazy

‫ َنِشْيط‬- Nasheet - Active

‫ َبِدْين‬- Badeen - Fat

‫ َنِح ْيف‬- Naheef - Thin or Slim

‫ َح ِزْين‬- Hazeen - Sad

‫ َواِضح‬- Wadih - Clear or Obvious

‫ َغاِمض‬- Ghamid - Unclear or Obscure

‫ َباِرع‬- Baarii - Skillful

‫ َماِهر‬- Mahir - Skillful

‫ ُمْبِدع‬- Mubdii - Creator or Inventor

‫ ُمَخاِدع‬- Mukhaadii - Cheater

‫ َمَدِّخن‬- Mudakhin - Smoker

‫ ُمَهَّذب‬- Muhazzib - Well mannered

‫ ُمْنِتج‬- Muntij - Producer or Maker

‫ ُمَخ ِّر ب‬- Mukharrib - Destroyer

Posted by webmaster at 04:00 PM

February 25, 2003 : 23 Zulhijjah 1423 Hijriah

Useful Everyday Words Conversational Arabic

Our last Arabic class was cancelled due to bad weather, so I don't have
any new stuff to post from the class notes. Below are some cool Arabic
words and phrases. Read them, write them, practice them and
memorize them. You should be building your vocabulary slowly. Use
the dictionary on the side to look for words. Arabic is great because
you can usually take the word and make other words from it, once you
understand what the root word is. Enjoy.

Note: If you find errors of any kind, please either leave a

comment or e-mail me.

‫ َيْوم‬- Yaum - Day

‫ ُأْس ُبوع‬- Usboo - Week

‫ َس اَعة‬- Saah - Hour

‫ َس َنة‬- Sanah - Year

‫ َأْمس‬- Ams - Yesterday

‫ َغَدًا‬- Ghadan - Tomorrow

‫ ُبْكَر ة‬- Bukrah - Tomorrow

‫ َطْبعًا‬- Tabaan - Of course

‫ ِباْلَعْكس‬- BilAks - On the contrary

‫ َأْيضًا‬- Aidhan - Also

‫ َأْحَيانًا‬- Ahyaanan - Sometimes

‫ َقِليًال‬- Qaleelan - A little

‫ َكِثيرًا‬- Katheeran - A lot

‫ ُكّل‬- Kull - Every

‫ َش ْي ء‬- Shai - Thing

‫ أْش َياء‬- Ashyaa - Things

‫ َصَباَح اْلَخ ْير‬- Sabah Al Khair - Good Morning

‫ َمَس اَءاْلَخ ْير‬- Masaa Al Khair - Good Night

‫ َأْهًال َو َسْهًال‬- Ahlan wa Sahlan - Welcome

‫ ِإَلي اِّللَقاء‬- Illal Liqaa - Until we meet again

‫ َمَع الَّس َالَمة‬- Maasalamah - With peace

‫ ألَّس َالُم َعَلْيُكم‬- Assalamu Alaikum - Peace be upon you

‫ َتَعال‬- Taal - Come here

‫ إْذَهْب‬- Izhab - Go

‫ ُخ ْذ‬- Khuz - Take

Posted by webmaster at 10:58 PM

February 18, 2003 : 16 Zulhijjah 1423 Hijriah

The Muslim Months of the Lunar Year

‫ ُمَح َّر م‬-١ - Muharram

‫ َصَفر‬-٢ - Safar

‫ َرِبْيُع اَألّول‬-٣ - Rabi al-awwal

‫ َرِبْيُع الَّثاِني‬-٤ - Rabi al-thani

‫ َج َماِدي اَألّول‬-٥ - Jumadi al-awwal

‫ َج َماِدي الَّثاِني‬-٦ - Jumadi al-thani

‫ َر َجْب‬-٧ - Rajab

‫ َش ْعَبان‬-٨ - Shaaban

‫ َرَمَضان‬-٩ - Ramadan

‫ َش َّوال‬-١٠ - Shawwal

‫ ُذواْلَقْعَدة‬-١١ - Dhu al-Qaada

‫ ُذواْلِح َّج ة‬-١٢ - Dhu al-Hijja

Posted by webmaster at 10:26 PM

Months of the Solar Year

‫ َيَناٍير‬- Yanayir - January

‫ ِفْبَر اِير‬- Fibrair - February

‫ َماْرْس‬- Mars - March

‫ ِإْبِريل‬- Ibrel - April

‫ َماُيو‬- Mayu - May

‫ ُيْوِنُيو‬- Yunio - June

‫ ُيْوِلُيو‬- Yulio - July

‫ َأَغْس ُطس‬- Aghustus - August

‫ ِسْبِتْمَبر‬- Sibtimbur - September

‫ ُأْكُتوَبر‬- Uktoober - October

‫ ُنْوِفْمَبر‬- Nofimber - November

‫ ِدْيَسْمَبر‬- Disumber - December

Once you finish the Arabic exercise you will be able to see your score. Good luck!

1. How do you say "what's your name?" in Arabic?

mahowa al ism? ‫ماهو االسم؟‬
mada ismi? ‫ماذا إسمي؟‬
ma ismuk? ‫ما إسمك؟‬
Ismuka ma? ‫إسمك ما؟‬
al ism mada? ‫اإلسم ماذا؟‬

2. How do you say "can you help me?" in Arabic?

Usa'iduka momken? ‫أساعدك ممكن؟‬
Ana usaidok? ‫أنا أساعدك؟‬
Momken an usa'edak? ‫ممكن أن أساعدك؟‬
Hal beemkanek mosa’adati? ‫هل بإمكانك مساعدتي؟‬
Hal beemkani mosa’adatuk? ‫هل بإمكاني مساعدتك؟‬
3. How do you say "Thank you"?
Marhaban bek ‫مرحبا بك‬
Shokran ‫شكرا‬
Ahlan ‫أهال‬
'Afwan ‫عفوا‬
Shakir ‫شاكر‬
4. What does " ‫ " كيف حالك؟‬mean in English?
What do you want?
How is the weather?
How are you?
What do you have?
Where are you from?
5. How do you say " ‫ " ماإسمك؟‬in English?
What's your name?
What is your profession?
Do you speak Arabic?
Will you help me?
Where are you?
6. How do you say " ‫ " كم هو عمرك؟‬in English?
How old are you?
How is your health?
What's his age?
Do you know it?
How many do you have?
7. Qamar ‫ قمر‬means "moon", how would you say "the moon" in Arabic? (definite
article)
hal qamar ‫هل قمر‬
aqamar ‫أقمر‬
mal qamar ‫مالقمر‬
alqamar ‫القمر‬
qamar ‫قمر‬
8. Shams ‫ شمس‬means "sun", how would you say "a sun"? (indefinite
article)
hal shams ‫هل شمس‬
alshams ‫اّلشمس‬
shams ‫شمس‬
ashams ‫الشمس‬
mal shams ‫مالشمس‬
9. How would you write number "5" in Arabic?
Khamees ‫خميس‬
 Khomus ‫خمس‬
Khamesa ‫خامسة‬
Khamseen ‫خمسين‬
Khamsa ‫خمسة‬
10. What does "wahed wa-’ishrun/ ‫ "واحد وعشرون‬mean in English?
12
120
11
21
13
11. "kitabi ‫ "كتابي‬means my book, how would you write "our book"?
kitabuk ‫كتابك‬
kitabuna ‫كتابنا‬
nahnu kitaab ‫نحن كتاب‬
kitabuha ‫كتابها‬
kitab ‫كتاب‬
12. "Sadeeq ‫ "صديق‬means "male friend", could you find the equivalent of "female
friend" ?
Asdeqaa ‫أصدقاء‬
Sadeequn ‫صديٌق‬
Sadeeqaan ‫صديقان‬
Sadeeqa ‫صديقة‬
Sadaqa ‫صداقة‬
13. "qitar" means train, how would you say "trains" in Arabic?
qitaraan ‫قطاران‬
qitaraat ‫قطارات‬
qitari ‫قطاري‬
qitars ‫قطارز‬
qitarati ‫قطاراتي‬
14. "I speak" in Arabic is "Atakallamu ‫"أتكلم‬, how would you write "you speak"
addressed to a male in Arabic?
Yatakallamu ‫يتكلم‬
Tatakallameena ‫تتكلمين‬
 Tatakallamu ‫تتكلم‬
Takalama ‫تكلَم‬
Takalum ‫تكُلم‬
15. "We wrote" in Arabic is "katabnaa ‫"كتبنا‬, how would you write "we went" in
Arabic? "
dahaba ‫ذهب‬
nadhabu ‫نذهب‬
dahabou ‫ذهبوا‬
dahab ‫ذهب‬
dahabnaa ‫ذهبنا‬
16. "taweel ‫ " طويل‬is an adjective which means "long" for the masculine singular,
what is its feminine singular form?
taweelan ‫طويال‬
taweeleen ‫طويلين‬
taweela ‫طويلة‬
taweelaat ‫طويالت‬
none of the above
17. Mohamed is taller than Sami, how would you write that in Arabic? Note that
"tall" = "taweel" = "‫"طويل‬
Mohamed taweel men Sami ‫محمد طويل من سامي‬
Mohamed atwal men Sami ‫محمد أطول من سامي‬
Mohamed tool Sami ‫محمد طول سامي‬
Mohamed taawela Sami ‫محمد طاولة سامي‬
Sami taweel men Mohamed ‫سامي طويل من محمد‬
18. I live in front of the school = Askunu ... al madrasa = ‫ المدرسة‬... ‫أسكن‬, a
preposition is missing, find it!
qabla ‫قبل‬
ba'da ‫بعد‬
jaaneb ‫جانب‬
amama ‫أمام‬
huna ‫هنا‬
19. Find the equivalent of "where are you?"
anta huna? ‫أنت هنا؟‬
aina ant? ‫أين أنت؟‬
 huna ant? ‫هنا أنت؟‬
ainaha? ‫اينها؟‬
man ant? ‫من أنت؟‬
20. How would you ask this question "do you speak Arabic?"
taf'al tatakallam al Arabia? ‫تفعل تتكلم العربية؟‬
taf'al anta takallam al Arabia? ‫تفعل أنت تتكلم العربية؟‬
hal yatakallam al Arabia? ‫هل يتكلم العربية؟‬
hada tatakallam al Arabia? ‫هذا تتكلم العربية؟‬
hal tatakallam al Arabia? ‫هل تتكلم العربية؟‬

Short Vowels in Arabic:

In Arabic short vowels are not a part of the Arabic alphabet, instead they are written as marks
over or below the consonant and sometimes over or below a long vowel. To make it easy we will
take an example in English: the word Canada is written as CNDA but using Arabic Alphabet, the
vowel A between C and N and between N and D are omitted, instead they’re replaced by small
symbols, especially because they’re only short vowels, you see the little dashes on the top of C
and on the top of N in the image below, they’re called FATHA in Arabic, meaning the short
vowel “A” in English, so instead of writing a word full of vowels in Arabic, we only write the
FATHA on the top of a consonant to indicate a short vowel “A”, and also we have symbols
referring to short vowel “E” or “I” , and also a symbol for short vowel “O” , actually this is a
good idea, because it’s saving space and also has an other advantage that we will see later. You
may have noticed that the consonant D and the vowel A don’t have any symbols on the top of
them in the image below, that’s because the “A” at the end is considered a long vowel in this
word, so it’s the vowel of “D”, no need to add another vowel on the top of “D” since the long
vowel “A” is already helping us pronounce the word the right way. Now you can look at the word
Canada in Arabic; you will see that it has the exact symbols as the word CNDA.

The table below shows other types of symbols referring to Arabic short vowels. First we see
Washington the way it’s written in English, and then we can see it using English Alphabet but
Arabic symbols of short vowels. And finally you can see the word in Arabic with its full short
vowels.
“WA” as you noticed doesn’t need a symbol, because the “W” is followed by a long vowel “A”,
“SH” is not followed by a vowel, which means that we need to add a short vowel referring to “i”,
and indeed we added one already, it’s the tick below the “SH” which is called KASRAH, you can
also see it marked as (#3). The “N” has a small circle on the top of it, that symbol is called
SUKOUN (marked as # 4 in the table below) referring to a consonant without a vowel, So any
time we have a consonant that doesn’t have a vowel, we just add that small circle on the top, note
that the SUKOUN should always be placed on the top and never below a consonant. So we used
the Sukoun in this word because we didn’t say NA NO NI but we just said N. Now let’s look at
the T, it has a little symbol which looks like comma on the top of the letter, that symbol is called
DAMMAH (# 2 in the table above) referring to a short vowel “O” , so when we add DAMMAH
to the letter “T”, we will get “TO”, easy, isn’t it! And finally as we have seen before, the final N
has another SUKOUN meaning that the N is without a Vowel, and should be pronounced N full
stop.

Let’s review what we just went through.

1 = FATHA = Short Vowel “A”

2 = DAMMAH = Short Vowel “O” or “U”

3 = KASRAH = Short Vowel “I” or “E”

4 = SUKOUN = Used for consonants lacking a vowel after them.

5= FATHATAIN= double FATHA (FATHA on the top of another FATHA)= FATHA + N= the
short vowel “A”+ N: Ghadan = ‫ = غدًا‬Tomorrow

6= KASRATAIN= double KASRAH (KASRAH on the top of another KASRAH)= KASRAH+

N= the short vowel “i” or “e”+ N: Kuratin= ‫= كرٍة‬a ball
7= DAMMATAIN= double DAMMAH (DAMMAH next to another DAMMAH)= DAMMAH+
N= the short vowel “o” or “u”+ N: Kitabun= ‫ =كتاٌب‬a book

Note that # 5, 6, 7 are not used as much as 1-4, also note that # 5, 6, 7 are only used at the
end of a word

Long Vowels in Arabic:

The table below shows the long vowels in Arabic, they’re considered long vowels because of the
stress they put on a given vowel, same thing exists in English, the word “exceed” should be
stressed in the vowels “ee” or “loose” the stress in the “oo”, note that these long vowels are also
considered some sort of consonants ( their pronunciation as a consonant can be found on the
page” ARABIC ALPHABET”.

There is also the SHADDAH, it’s the symbol marked as number 1 on the image below, used
when we have a double consonant, like instead of writing the proper name (ANNA with double
“N”, we only write it with one N and add SHADDAH on the top of N, the example # 2 shows
how the SHADDAH placed on the top of the letter T in Arabic, the transliteration of the word is
QATTA’A which mean the verb “to cut” in Arabic it’s written QATA’A and instead of writing
double T, the word has only one T and a SHADAH on the top of it.

Example # 3 shows a little symbol on the top of the ALIF which looks like the Latin ~, it’s called
MAD, and mostly used on the top of ALIF to express a long “A” something like “AA”, the word
shown in example # 4 is AAB, it means the month of August, but the MAD is not used that often,
so you will come across it but rarely.
Finally, This may surprise you but short vowels in Arabic are not used that often, you may come
across them if two words look the same and the writer wants you to distinguish between them so
that they won’t be confused, the person would than add only the vowel which doesn’t exist in the
other word, but other than that sometimes you can read a whole text without coming across any
short vowel. The reason is that in Arabic most words are distinctive without short vowels; I will
give you an example in English in the Image below:

It doesn’t take that much thinking to know what do these words mean, I omitted 2 vowels from
Canada for example, and two vowels from the word Computer ... that’s how reading Arabic
works. Sometimes we have to add a vowel because it’s a long vowel and not a short one like the
“a” in Cnda.

Below is an example of how the verb “to write” is written in Arabic, it’s written ‫ كتب‬which is
equal to “ktb” in Latin alphabet, but we don’t read it like “ktb” but as “kataba”, as you have
noticed 3 vowels are added when you pronounce it, but when you write it, only the consonants
are enough to give us an idea about the word. Writing only one verb in Arabic alphabet without
short vowels saved you the time to write 3 vowels, imagine how much it could save you when
you write a text…

In short, short vowels that are presented as symbols are not important to read Arabic, but they
make it easy to read for beginner and also to avoid confusion between two similar looking words.

Try to master these Arabic vowels as they’re very important for beginners