Patterns in Arabic part III: applications
[Patterns in Arabic : part 1]
[Patterns in Arabic : part 2]
Click on the Arabic words for the audio!
How to use the pattern to derive nouns?
The interesting thing about Arabic is that it has an entire pattern system where a pattern is linked with a meaning. Keep in mind that, when the word follows a pattern it needs to copy it perfectly: both in terms of letters and short vowels. The word and the pattern need to mirror each other perfectly.
For example, the pattern فاعِل fāʿil means the “doer of the verb” and it’s referred to as اسم الفاعل (the pattern of the doer of the verb). Therefore every word that follows the pattern فاعِل fāʿil in triconsonontal (three lettered) roots will carry that meaning.
Some examples are included in the table below:
The root “كتب” means to write, and the pattern فاعل means the “doer” so the word كاتب means “the person who writes/ does the act of writing”. Using this logic can help us guess the meaning of new words and learn them with more ease.
*There is a word for “thief” which is لص, I used “stealer” because we’re talking about someone who stole something in a particular context or the culprit in a particular theft of crime, not someone whose profession is to steal. I also preferred using “doer” instead of subject since the word in Arabic implies an action being done.
Similarly, there are other patterns with different meanings, let’s take the pattern for اسم المَفْعولٌ, the pattern is مَفْعول ٌ which means “something that has been done”. For example:
[audio : table 3] / [audio : table 4] / رأى أحمد الكاتب / مفعول به
How to use these patterns to understand verb patterns?
I’ve always been skeptical of the notion of the 10 patterns, since this is a relatively new notion and hasn’t been mentioned or adopted by the older, more traditional grammarians of the Arabic language, but after researching and reading about it (especially the writings of Dr. H̱ālid ʾbū ʿamša), I understand now how helpful this notion is in helping learners who are not native Arabic spakers learn the language.
The 10 patterns system is just a rearrangement of the most relevant and the most commonly used patterns in Arabic, the patterns have always existed and obviously, they each have a meaning linked to them, this (relatively new) order helps give the learners a structure and helps them see the additions, the changes and the omissions that happen to the verb, the first form is the basic form (the root), and as I said before, this is our unit of reference so when we compare it to the other forms (from 2 to 10) we can see what changes took place to the verb.The focus in these ten patterns is the triconsonontal (three lettered) roots since they are the most common in Arabic.
Let’s take the first verb form, which is the most basic one: فَعَلَ, the past tense from the verb is يَفْعَلُ, and the imperative form is افْعَلْ. Start off by memorizing the ten patterns in the same order you find them in this schedule, they will help you derive the different words and also understand the meaning of each derived word, for example
I will prepare a mini-series of short videos covering the different 10 patterns and the derived verbs from them and share the first part of it soon (inshallah) to avoid making this post too long.
What’s the link between Arabic poetry and patterns?
One of the most important applications of the pattern in Arabic in Arabic poetry, after all, poetry in Arabic follows a specific pattern (which we’ll be referring to as “meters”) and understanding it is linked with understanding the different patterns الأوزان.
The branch of Arabic language that specializes in studying the meters used in poetry is called عِلْمُ العَروضُ | ʿilm al-ʿarūḍ.
In short, there are 16 patterns called بحور الشعر | buḥūr aššiʿr (singular baḥr | بَحْر) and in order for a poem to be correct, it has to follow on of these patterns. Each baḥr is composed of a certain number of units per verse, each unit is called التّفْعيلة.
The interesting thing is that for each poem that follows a certain baḥr, when you analyses the pattern of each word, you’ll notice that every verse follows the same metric pattern, even if the poem has 100 verses, every single verse will follow the pattern.
I’ll take an example of one of the 16 baḥr (poem pattern): this one is called البحر المُتَقاربُ, in this baḥr, the unit is فعولن repeated 8 times each verse this means that every poem that follows البحر المتقارب
This is a very long topic to discuss, but it’s also very interesting. I might prepare lessons about this if anyone is interested about learning more about analyzing Arabic poetry using the metric system. The reason why I raised it is to show you how important these patterns are and how they can be applied in different aspects of the language.
