When I first started learning Arabic, friends and family would ask me if it was hard. Many of them assumed that it was tough because of its script.
While learning a new script can be difficult, it’s the grammar that makes Arabic tricky to master because Arabic and English grammar are pretty different.
Fortunately though, Arabic grammar is quite consistent and systematic. So you won’t spend a huge amount of time learning exceptions.
To get you started, here are nine of the main rules of Arabic grammar. For each one, I’ll break down the grammar rule and give you some tips to master them.
Pro Tip
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Table of Contents
1. Every Arabic Dialect Has Its Own Grammar Features
Before jumping into the Arabic grammar rules themselves, I do think it’s important to cover this point.
Unlike many other languages, Arabic dialects can differ to the point that many native Arabic speakers from one country can’t understand other dialects from other countries.
For the most part, the fundamental grammar rules in Arabic are fairly constant across all the dialects. Still, there are some significant differences.
For example, all verb conjugations for the present tense in the Levantine Arabic start with a b- / ب- prefix. This doesn’t come up in other dialects like the Egyptian dialect.
It’s because of this that I won’t get into Køb mobiltelefonnummerliste all the grammar features for each of the dialects. Instead I’ll focus on some of the main Arabic grammar features in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is the standard written form of Arabic.
The good news though is that the grammar for Arabic dialects is generally a lot more simple than MSA. So it’s not difficult to pick up on the grammar of any of the dialects after developing a solid foundation in MSA.
2. All Arabic Nouns Are Gendered
As an English speaker, I sometimes feel lucky that nouns in English aren’t gendered. But if you do grow up speaking a language with gendered words, then it probably feels like second nature.
This must be the case for most Arabic speakers, because all Arabic nouns are either masculine or feminine.
Fortunately, unlike some languages, it’s pretty simple to tell whether a word is masculine or feminine in Arabic. That’s because words that are feminine typically end with a letter in the alphabet that we call the tarmabuuta / ة, while masculine words typically do not.
When speaking, it’s often pretty easy to tell which nouns are masculine or feminine. That’s because the tarmabuuta / ة is typically sounded as the “a” sound in English. Here are a few examples of masculine and feminine nouns in Arabic:
That said, there are some nouns that are feminine that don’t have a tarmabuuta / ة at the end. Most of them are easy to remember because you can assume from the translation of the noun itself that the
word might be feminine.
For example, you can safely guess kako pafi blitar kab oblikuje regionalni razvoj that the words bint / بنت (girl) or um / أم (mother) are feminine because of the meaning.
There are also a few other categories of nouns where you can safely assume that they’re feminine, even if they don’t have a tarmabuuta / ة at the end.
Considering all of this and because so much of Arabic grammar builds on a strong foundation of knowing the gender of different nouns, I’d recommend noting down whether a word is masculine or
In many languages, one of the first things you’ll want to learn is how to make words plural. In English, for example, you can make words plural by adding an “s” at the end of the word.
ghtforward in English, making nouns plural in Arabic comes with a few more rules depending on the type of bjb directory noun in question.
For starters, if the noun is for a person, you add the suffix -uun / -ون at the end of the word for masculine nouns or the suffix -aat / -ات if the word is feminine.
Feeling confused? I wouldn’t worry about it so much. At first, it might be something that you have to wrap your head around – I certainly felt that way when I first started learning this.
In fact, there are still times I mix up plurals when speaking. Fortunately when this has happened, my conversation partners have been really understanding about it and have pointed it out. And I take a mental note of it to avoid making the same mistake in the future.
