Patterns in Arabic : part 1
Requested by @hello-freen-machine, who asked for a lesson exaplaining the different baabs / patterbs in Arabic
الميزانُ الصَّرْفِيُّ is the name of today’s lesson, the word ميزان means “scale”, and الصرفي is from the word صرف which refers to the conjugaition.
I decided to divide this lesson into parts to give us the time needed to understand the very basics before moving to the applications, which may seem complicated but they’re simple if we understand the basic concepts.
Click on the Arabic words for the audio!
This lesson is advanced, and it needs knowledge of the two main types of the roots and the different types of verbs فعل مُجَرَّد(base form of the verb) and فعل مزيد (base form + additional letters), and I will make lessons about this in the future inshallah.
As you might already know, every Arabic word has a root, this root is a three letter verb that has a meaning, and from that root we’re able to derive the different words in Arabic, the interesting thing is that the meaning of whatever new word we derive will always be linked to the root.
The two most common types of roots in Arabic are: triconsonotal (three lettered) roots جَذّرُ ثُلاثيُّ (which is the vast majority of roots) and the quadriliteral (four lettered) roots جَذْرٌ رُباعِيٌّ (less common).
Knowing the roots and being able to remove the “additional letters” أًحْرُفُ الزِّيادَةِ from your root will help you understand the verb patterns, and it will help you be able to use Arabic dictionaries since the words are organized according to the roots.
What is this “scale”? How does it work?
Just like an actual scale is used to weigh things, like gold: let’s say we have a golden bracelet, golden earrings, and a golden ring, we’ll need a unit of reference (the gram) to measure these different forms of gold so that selling it and buying it would be easier, right?
Similarly, we need a unit of reference to help us determine how different the word is to the root form, and whether or not there has been any added or omitted letters to this word.
The base unit of this scale is the three lettered root فَعَلَ , the word literally means “to do” : the past tense of the verb, and we will be using this word as the unit with which we will “measure” the words.
As we said, the “unit” فَعَلَ can be seen as the representative of all three lettered roots in Arabic (which is a verb in the past tense in its simplest form). The best way to understand it is to use examples: the verb كَتَبَ
I colored the letters in similar colors to show you which letter is the equivalent to which.
The base is فَعَلَ : it’s composed of فـ ـعـ ـل , to refer to the first letter of any given three lettered root, we call it the ف of the verb, and to refer to the second letter of any given three lettered root, we call it the ع of the verb, and finally, the third letter of any three lettered root is called the ل of the verb.
This is a very important concept and can be used for any given three lettered verb, for example : أَكَلَ (to eat) >>> if we use the scale of فَعَلَ to measure it then we’ll get the following :
An important thing to keep in mind is that the أ (the flexible alif) needs to be returned to its original form, which is either و or ي, for more information you can refer to this post . And only after we return it to the original form, can we start applying the rule of the “scale” of فَعَلَ
The verb عاش(to live) is originally عيش, and if we use the pattern it will be :
The verb يَصِلُ (to arrive) : should be returned to the past tense وَصَلَ, and then we can compare it to فَعَلَ
What about the added letters?
In case there is an added letter, as long as you’ve reverted the word to its three lettered roots, all you need to do is just add the same letters that were added to the word into the root. But keep in mind that the pattern and the word that is being mesured to it need to have the same number of letters.
This can be better understood with an example, this time I’m using a noun وقاية:
Notice the letters that were colored in the word وقاية are only the letters of the base, which areو قــ ــي , so in order to get the pattern of وقاية, we’ll need to add the same added letters to our base unit, the unit of reference : فعل. This is what the pattern of وقاية would be :
Notice how the black letters in the word are added to the pattern, as they are. And now the word has 5 letters in it, and similarly, the pattern of this same word has 5 letters in it.
Let’s take an example we’ve seen before: what’s the pattern of the word يعيش ?
Step 1: find the root of the word (عَيَشَ)
Step 2 : compare it to our unit of reference (فَعَلَ)
Step 3 : include the additional letters, add them to the patter and you’ll get يَفْعَلُ.
Color coding helps a lot so I recommend using it. This technique can be applied to any word, it’s really simple, follow the three steps and you’ll get the pattern for any given word.
Next time, will be the application of the bases that we’ve seen in this lesson, the practical uses of these patterns.
Next lessons, inshllah, we will answer these questions:
What are the different verb patterns?
What about the pattern of quadriliteral (four lettered) roots?
What nouns can be derived from these patterns?
How to get the patterns for words with omitted letters?
How can we use these scales to determine the patterns of verbs?
I hope you found this helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or doubts.
