Arabic 7 — ʿIlm aṣ-ṣarf — the eight verb types and the sound verb kataba عِلْمُ الصَّرْفِ وَتَصْرِيفُ الفِعْلِ السَّالِمِ

A new subject opens here: عِلْمُ الصَّرْفِ (ʿilm aṣ-ṣarf, morphology) — the eight-way classification of the triliteral verb, then the whole of كَتَبَ through المَاضِي / المُضَارِع / المُسْتَقْبَل / الأَمْر. Alongside it runs the Book 2 page-78 reading text مُعَلِّمُ السِّبَاحَةِ ("The Swimming Teacher") and its vocabulary.

1 · The opening ḥadīth — the strong believer #

The lesson opens with a ḥadīth reminder:

Word by word:

• أَحَبُّ (aḥabb) is an اِسْمُ التَّفْضِيلِ (ism at-tafḍīl, the elative), built from حَبِيب (ḥabīb, beloved) on the same pattern as كَبِير ← أَكْبَر.
• "Strong" is not only physical. Do not read al-qawiyy as body fitness alone: strong in every matter — financially strong, mentally strong. Such a person is better than a weak one, and more beloved to Allah.
• احْرِصْ عَلَى مَا يَنْفَعُكَ — whatever is of benefit, be attentive to it and acquire it; even a relationship is to be weighed that way. But our own strength is limited, so the ḥadīth continues وَاسْتَعِنْ بِاللهِ — obtain it with Allah's help.

The desert analogy. In earlier times a man crossing the desert did not simply set out. He first went to the chief of the region and took his protection — like an insurance policy, like a permit — and whoever attacked him then had that chief's men fighting on his behalf. A man who went alone could be beaten or killed with nobody to protect him; however great a champion he is, on his own he is finished. Saying بِسْمِ اللهِ at the start of every affair is exactly that: taking Allah's protection with you. "I have someone behind me" — and that someone is Allah. That is الْمُؤْمِنُ الْقَوِيُّ.

2 · What ṣarf is #

Today's subject has not been looked at formally before: the science of الصَّرْف (aṣ-ṣarf).

• الصَّرْف studies how words in Arabic change — how, from one word, the next words are derived — and in particular the study of the verb. From this one word, how does the plural come? By what method? That is ṣarf.
• In linguistic terms it is morphology: the analysis of the verb.

Why it matters here. In Sri Lanka, when a man is said to be studying Islamic Studies, people ask him about fiqh, tafsīr, uṣūl al-fiqh — and about this: do you know ṣarf? That is the yardstick they set; only if you know this are you counted.

3 · ḥurūf al-ʿillah — the letters that decide everything #

الفِعْل (al-fiʿl) is the verb. Take the three letters أَلِف، وَاو، يَاء (alif, wāw, yāʾ):

• elsewhere they are called حُرُوفُ المَدِّ (ḥurūf al-madd, letters of prolongation) — in another language, the long vowels;
• in this discipline they are the حُرُوفُ العِلَّةِ (ḥurūf al-ʿillah).

The whole classification turns on one question: do these letters occur in the verb or not?

So the verb splits two ways first, and each half splits again.

4 · The three kinds of ṣaḥīḥ verb #

The ṣaḥīḥ verb — no ʿillah letter in it — divides into three:

• Do not confuse the هَمْزة with the alif of madd — they are not the same thing.
• Each of the eight types has to be conjugated in ṣarf on its own.

5 · The five kinds of muʿtall verb #

The muʿtall verb is divided by where the ḥarf ʿillah falls:

• مِثَال ordinarily means "example," but in ṣarf it is this technical sense.
• جَوْف (jawf) = "the middle / the interior" — as in جَوْفُ اللَّيْلِ, the middle of the night. Hence ajwaf.
• مَفْرُوق = "separated," which is exactly the difference from maqrūn ("joined").

6 · كَتَبَ in the māḍī — the full paradigm #

We begin with the most basic type, الفِعْلُ الصَّحِيحُ السَّالِمُ, and its verb is كَتَبَ (kataba), "he wrote."

How the endings are built:

• feminine third person — add a تْ carrying sukūn: كَتَبَتْ.
• the addressed — كَتَبْتَ to a man, كَتَبْتِ to a woman.
• myself — كَتَبْتُ, the same whether the speaker is male or female.
• masculine plural — add a wāw and an alif: كَتَبُوا. Every verb behaves the same: صَرَفَ / صَرَفُوا, ذَهَبَ / ذَهَبُوا.
• feminine plural — sukūn on the verb, then a shaddah-ed nūn: كَتَبْنَ.

The dual — المُثَنَّى #

Besides singular and plural, Arabic has a dual, the المُثَنَّى (al-muthannā), for exactly two — so fix the dual firmly in mind.

• The dual is made with an alif (or, in other positions, a yāʾ): كَتَبَا, كَتَبَتَا, كَتَبْتُمَا.
• كَتَبْتُمَا is the same for masculine and feminine.
• There is no first-person dual. Whether it is two people or ten, you say كَتَبْنَا.

Negating the māḍī — put مَا in front #

And nothing else changes at all. The مَا simply stands in front of every form:

"The two of them did not write" = مَا كَتَبَتَا, and so on down the list.

7 · The muḍāriʿ — أَنَيْتُ and يَكْتُبُ #

To make the present, المُضَارِع (al-muḍāriʿ), you need one of the حُرُوفُ المُضَارَعَةِ (ḥurūf al-muḍāraʿah), the four present-tense letters, collected in the mnemonic word أَنَيْتُ: أ، ن، ي، ت (hamzah, nūn, yāʾ, tāʾ).

Building يَكْتُبُ from كَتَبَ:

1. put a يَ (yāʾ with fatḥah) in front — the ḥarf al-muḍāraʿah;
2. the second letter always takes a sukūn;
3. the last letter takes a ḍammah.

The middle vowel is not fixed. It may be fatḥah, kasrah or ḍammah, and it varies from verb to verb — that part has to be memorised:

An aside on the mahmūz: a hamzah anywhere in the verb makes it مَهْمُوز, and turning a mahmūz into the present causes no trouble. It is the sālim being drilled here; the other types change differently, which is why they are kept separate.

The full muḍāriʿ paradigm #

• feminine third person — as kataba became katabat, the yāʾ becomes a tāʾ: يَكْتُبُ ← تَكْتُبُ.
• تَكْتُبِينَ — "you [f.] write" — with a yāʾ and a nūn.
• plural = wāw + nūn; dual = alif + nūn; yāʾ + nūn = the feminine singular addressed.

• The third- and second-person masculine plurals differ only in the prefix: يـ for "they," تـ for "you" — يَكْتُبُونَ vs تَكْتُبُونَ. Same for the feminine plurals يَكْتُبْنَ vs تَكْتُبْنَ.
• أَكْتُبُ has no dual — for two speakers as for ten it is نَكْتُبُ.
• The dual is not a plural. English and Tamil treat two people as simply plural; Arabic does not. يَكْتُبَانِ = "the two of them write," a category of its own, distinct from يَكْتُبُونَ, "they [three or more] write." Drill the dual — it is the part people skip.

Try one out: مَاذَا تَفْعَلِينَ؟ — mādhā tafʿalīna? — "what are you [f.] doing?"

Negating the muḍāriʿ — put لَا in front #

Where the past took مَا, the present takes لَا, and again nothing whatever changes in the verb:

لَا يَكْتُبُ carries two senses: "he does not write [now]" and "he will not write." Both readings are available for the muḍāriʿ.

Why مَا is not used with the present #

Put مَا before a present verb and it means something else. The word مَا has several uses in Arabic; four of them:

So: مَا كَتَبَ = "he did not write," but مَا يَكْتُبُ = "what he writes." Before the past, مَا negates; before the present, it does not — there it is لَا.

8 · Memorise them, or you will not speak #

• Memorise all fourteen forms, repeating until they stick; then practice makes it easy.
• This is a matter of language, not of religion as such. Language skill means speaking, reading, writing — that is what it is.
• The Sudan story. Grammar was a subject back home, with 98–99 marks scored in it; yet on arriving in Sudan, not a single question could be asked — not of the teachers, not of the Sudanese, not even of the children.
• Fluency over perfection. Think how much we speak Tamil with grammatical mistakes and still speak. Even in the mother tongue plain speech comes out with errors. The thing that matters is to speak fluently, without stopping.
• What to listen to, in rising difficulty: video sets (good for the language and for Islamic knowledge) → a بَيَان (bayān, a talk) → a story, say an incident from the life of a ṣaḥābī → news, which is a step harder. A whole bulletin is difficult, so start with a short clip, one item, twenty seconds.
• Dialects. In Egypt the ج is pronounced as a g in ordinary conversation — جَمِيل comes out as gamīl. In Sudan the ق is pronounced as a g. That is everyday speech, and it differs from the standard.
• Read a little Arabic daily — القِرَاءَة الرَّاشِدَة (al-Qirāʾah ar-Rāshidah), قِصَص النَّبِيِّين (Qiṣaṣ an-Nabiyyīn), or the still shorter story books of a few pages. At least a page a day. For ḥadīth, tafsīr, fiqh the sources are Arabic even when you search in English — so the reading must get strong.

9 · The mustaqbal — سَـ and سَوْفَ #

Take the present-tense form and put a سَـ (sa-) in front of it. That is all.

The three names so far: the past is المَاضِي, the present is المُضَارِع, the future is المُسْتَقْبَل.

10 · The amr — الأَمْر, the imperative #

أَمْر means "command / order," and it is the fourth thing, built on the present form.

The gate: a command is given only to the person you are addressing — to the المُخَاطَب. You cannot command an absent third party. So only the تَـ forms are eligible — five of them:

Two operations turn one of those five into a command:

1. Remove the ḥarf al-muḍāraʿah — the تـ that marks the present.
2. Put a sukūn on the last letter.

Do that to تَكْتُبُ and you are left with كْتُبْ — which cannot be pronounced, because it begins with a sukūn.

هَمْزَةُ الوَصْلِ — the alif that lets you begin #

So you prefix an alif: اُكْتُبْ (uktub) — "write!" That alif is there only to let you start the word.

• It is the هَمْزَةُ الوَصْلِ (hamzat al-waṣl), and when something comes before it, it is not pronounced. You meet this in recitation: with a wāw in front you say وَاكْتُبْ (wa-ktub), not wa-uktub. Likewise اللَّهُمَّ انْصُرْ (allāhumma-nṣur) — the alif is written but not sounded.

Which vowel does that alif take? It follows the middle vowel of the muḍāriʿ (the imperatives of the reading text in §12 show it):

The five imperative forms of كتب #

الأَفْعَال الخَمْسَة — the five verbs and the dropping nūn #

Look at what is happening in that table. These five present forms —

— are الأَفْعَالُ الخَمْسَةُ (al-afʿāl al-khamsah, "the five verbs"), and there is a rule in grammar for exactly these five:

That is why the imperative loses it. And it is not confined to the imperative: bring لَمْ (lam) in front of any of those five and the same thing happens — the nūn falls.

The feminine plural is the exception. تَكْتُبْنَ carries the nūn of the feminine plural — "two nūns' worth of it" — and that nūn never goes, whatever comes in front of it. Nothing changes it; the form is fixed. Hence تَكْتُبْنَ ← اُكْتُبْنَ, nūn intact.

11 · The four, for the sālim #

The other seven types continue in Lesson 8.

12 · The reading text, p.78 — مُعَلِّمُ السِّبَاحَةِ #

مُعَلِّمُ السِّبَاحَةِ (muʿallimu-s-sibāḥah) — "The Swimming Teacher," Book 2 page 78.

The vocabulary in front of the text #

• زَلَّ carries a well-known saying: إِذَا زَلَّ الْعَالِمُ زَلَّ الْعَالَمُ — idhā zalla-l-ʿālimu zalla-l-ʿālam — "If the scholar slips, the world slips." إِذَا is the conditional "if"; العَالِم the scholar, العَالَم the world. Note also how the present differs from the past here: زَلَّ / يَزِلُّ.
• And: لِكُلِّ جَوَادٍ كَبْوَةٌ — li-kulli jawādin kabwah — "every fine steed has its stumble," i.e. every horse slips. It comes with a story: when Imām ash-Shāfiʿī went to Madinah to study, an elephant came to the city one day and everyone went out to see it; he did not go.
• النَّجْدَة put in the accusative becomes a cry: النَّجْدَةَ! (an-najdata!) — "Help!" — or أَنْجِدْنِي (anjidnī), "help me."
• From صَاحَ comes صَيْحَة (ṣayḥah), the cry / blast, which occurs in the Qur'an.
• سَكَتَ is the opposite of ṣāḥa.

The text #

The passage below follows the class's line-by-line reading; read the exact wording from the textbook.

Word notes:

• دَاخِل = "inside"; its opposite خَارِج = "outside": دَاخِلَ الْمَسْجِدِ / خَارِجَ الْمَسْجِدِ, خَارِجَ الْبَلَدِ, خَارِجَ الْبَيْتِ.
• جَرَّبَ (jarraba) = "to test, to try out." At a shop buying a phone you say جَرِّبْ — "test it." Test the water, check it and see; or taste the food to see if it is done — جَرِّبْ. From the same root: تَجْرِبَة (tajribah) — an experiment, and an experience.

The ḥāl aside #

Look at line 1: وَقَفَ … يُعَلِّمُ — two verbs. He did one thing while doing another: he stood teaching. In grammar that is the حَال (ḥāl, the circumstantial):

One action performed in the course of another. The ḥāl is taught properly later in the course — keep it in mind for now.

The imperatives pulled back out of the text #

Imperatives from the text, showing the hamzat al-waṣl vowel rule of §10: