Grammar - Intro

Question 1

Sentence Structure

Answer 1

Just like English, Arabic is a Subject - Verb - Object language. Example sentence: Ahmed loves Sarah (Ahmed = subject, love = verb, Sarah = object).

Question 2

Pronouns

Answer 2

Just like English, pronouns can replace nouns in a sentence. Example: I am happy (I = pronoun). Other examples of pronouns: They, he, she, we, you.

Question 3

Present form of “to be” in Arabic

Answer 3

There is no verb for “to be” in Arabic. Instead, you just leave it out, and the word is implied. In other words, the word for “I” also means “I am”; the word for “We” also means “We are”. For example: I happy = I am happy; We tired = We are tired.

Question 4

Past form of “to be” in Arabic

Answer 4

There are words for the past forms of “to be” in Arabic (e.g. “was”, “will be”).

Question 5

The verb “to have”

Answer 5

This verb works much differently in Arabic than English (basically, in English we use it for a bunch of different meanings, but in Arabic there are different words depending on the meaning). For example, the verb for “have to” do something is different than the verb for I “have” something in my bag.

Question 6

Nouns and gender

Answer 6

Just like French, Arabic nouns have gender, and everything around them must be conjugated to match. Most nouns that are feminine end in an “uh” sound. For example: book = ktb is a masculine noun. Bag = shntuh is a feminine noun.

Question 7

Plurals

Answer 7

In English we generally add an ‘s’ at the end to make words plural. In Arabic it isn’t as simple, but there are patterns. Generally, the word is the same, but with a slightly different ending.