How to conjugate the verbs of the Arabic world?
BlogLanguagesArabThe Conjugation of Arabic Verbs: How to conjugate the verbs of the Arabic world?
Index
What verb tenses are used in Arabic?
The perfective in Arabic
The imperfective in Arabic
What Arabic verbs do I have to learn?
Exercises to improve your Arabic skills
How to learn Arabic conjugation with a teacher?: How to conjugate the verbs of the Arabic world?
“Life is nothing more than a verb and, therefore, it must be conjugated correctly.” Francis Blanche (1921-1974)
It is known to all that the level of Spaniards (in general) in language matters is not the highest in the world: the Spanish population lacks a lot of competence in English, French, German or Italian. So imagine how difficult it must be for Spaniards to learn Arabic, with its alphabet, grammar and conjugation.
Well, in this article we will focus on conjugated verbs in Arabic. Here is the essential to conjugate all the verbs of this language.
What verb tenses are used in Arabic?
To teach the Romance languages that come from Latin, it is usually spoken in verbal modes (the present indicative, the future, the past perfect compound, the past imperfect, the past perfect, the modes of the subjunctive, the imperative, etc.)
In the Arabic language, two forms are used to conjugate all Arabic tenses , instead of using all Romance conjugation modes: the perfective and the imperfective.
How would you say “go to Tunisia” in each of the tenses?
First of all, the student has to learn the tables of conjugation, the nouns and the Arabic writing system.
The perfective in Arabic
If you go to a class in Egyptian Arabic (the best known and often used in writing), the perfective aspect is explained as an action that has already occurred: the equivalent of the simple present perfect (and the rest of tenses that imply the past, in truth). Therefore, the important thing here is that the tense of the verb is determined based on the context of the sentence . In this way, the word kataba is in almost all phrases that speak of the past.
Actually speaking Arabic in the perfective means learning the Arabic alphabet, mastering the pronunciation and the personal pronoun:
Me: ana, أنا .
You (masculine): ènta , أنت.
You (feminine): èntia , أنت.
He and she: houa (هو) et hia (هي).
We: nahnou ( نحن).
You: ntoma (ينتما).
They and they: homa (هم).
When we conjugate a verb in the perfective, we must bear in mind that Arabic terms are based on a three-letter consonant system, a triliterate radical that we will find in each word of the same semantic field.
A fundamental rule: the infinitive of an Arabic verb is always written in the third person of the masculine singular.
To describe an action that is over, we add a suffix consisting of one or two vowels, matching the person, number, and gender. For example, the verb to be is pronounced as follows in the third person: kana or “he has been.” To say, “he wrote” or “he has written” one must put, as we mentioned before, the term kataba , which has the root of three consonants: k, t and b. In this way, if we want to say “he wrote” in Arabic and in the past tense, we will say “he has been + write in the past tense”: kana yaktoub.
