Arabic verb system in a nutshell – categories of verbs

Building tenses in Arabic

In the Arabic language, we encounter three tenses – the present, the past and the future.

If you are a bit familiar with Slavic languages you know this concept already by heart:

Spoken Arabic uses two aspects when it comes to telling tenses.
It distinguishes between a perfective aspect and an imperfective aspect.

Moods

We find Arabic verbs in three moods – the indicative mood, the subjunctive mood and the so called jussive mood.

The jussive has three tasks in the Arabic language:

(1) It negates actions in the past (by the use of لَمْ).
(2) It negates an imperative (with لا).
(3) It forms an imperative in the third person (with لِ).

Numbers

As we have heard when learning about the noun in Arabic, we find a singular form, a plural and a dual form.
This is also true for the Arabic verb system.

The voices of Arabic verbs

Arabic verbs know an active and a passive voice.

Stems of Arabic verbs

The Arabic verb system knows ten so called 'verb stems'.

Those ten stems are categorized with the Roman numbers I / II / II / IV – and so on.
Stem I marks the infinitive form of an Arabic verb.
Verb stems from II to X translate the mood or the voice of a verb.
Every stem is built following a certain rule.
Please note that not every Arabic verb has ten different stems. (Well, some of them do have ten different stems...)

Arabic verbs in dictionaries

If you want to look up an Arabic verb in a dictionary, you will find there: the third person, singular, masculine – in the perfect tense.

For example:
If you look up the verb فَعَلَ
...you can translate this verb form with “he did” into English.

If you have been working with a classical Arabic grammar book, you have learnt Arabic verbs first in the third person, then in the second person – followed by (last but not least) the first person.

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Arabic verb system in a nutshell – categories of verbs

Building tenses in Arabic

Moods

Numbers

The voices of Arabic verbs

Stems of Arabic verbs

Arabic verbs in dictionaries

Arabic Grammar

Introduction

Articles

Nouns

Adjectives & Adverbs

Verbs

Useful information

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