Year 1 Review: Adverbs and Passive Voice

As-salaamu 'alaikum!

In this final review module of the year, I'm going to cover two units from April that I was not present to actually teach in person. Unfortunately, understanding either relies on hearing short sound changes that are hard to convey in writing. I encourage you to look up videos on YouTube to hear what I'm referring to, or email me directly.

The first subject of today is the Arabic adverb, a type of word that (like in English) describes how a verb is done. Adverbs in English are made out of adjectives and tend to end in "-ly," so "quick" (an adjective) becomes "quickly" (an adverb) in the same way as "angry" becomes "angrily." Arabic adverbs are more versatile in that you can make one out of an adjective or a noun. So while adverbs like "elephant-ly" or "book-ly" do not exist in English, they are perfectly viable in Arabic.

The way to make one of these Arabic adverbs is to add a little mark called fat-ha bi-tanween onto either an alif, a ta marbuta, or a hamza on the end of a word. The fat-ha bi-tanween (which for now you can just call a double fat-ha) mark looks like this:

ً

And on its three possible base letters, it looks like this:

اً   ةً   ءً

These three letters (alif, ta marbuta, and hamza) are the only three that the double fat-ha can sit on top of, and if a word doesn't end in one of them (as most words don't), you'll have to add an alif. In all cases, this little add-on is pronounced as a short "an" sound. You've heard me say it in words like جداً (jiddan, very) or كثيرا (katheeran, a lot). If a word ends in a ta marbuta, then the double fat-ha comes after the ta sound too: so the word عادةً is pronounced "3aadatan" (meaning usually). 

Although the topic is more technical in Arabic grammar, you can think of any word that ends in one of those three letters with a double fat-ha as an adverb. Once again, these can be made out of both nouns and adjectives, so have fun and be poetic with them! Here are some examples:

سريعاً

"saree3an"

quickly

قليلاً

"qaleelan"

a little bit

ليلاً

"laylan"

at night

The second subject for today is the Arabic passive voice. A "voice" is not a conjugation or a tense, or even a part of speech. It's just a way of arranging a sentence, and Arabic has two just like English: the active voice and the passive voice. In both languages, the active voice is much more common. Active voice is the one where a subject does an object: I read a book, you played the game, he wore his favorite sweater. All active voice sentences. The passive voice versions of these sentences in English are "A book was read by me," "The game was played by you," and "His favorite sweater was worn by him." In other words, the object comes first, then a passive voice verb, then "by" and the subject. 

In Arabic, there are two differences: first, the passive voice verb in Arabic does not need "was" at all. It simply changes its vowels into one of two predictable patterns:

In the perfect tense, this pattern is فُعِلَ (fu-3i-la, or simply "u-i-a"). 

In the imperfect tense, this pattern is يُفعَل (yuf-3al, or simply "u-a").

Any verb voweled in this pattern has a passive voice meaning, so whereas أكل pronounced "a-ka-la" means "he ate," the same verb أكل pronounced "u-ki-la" means "he was eaten." Similarly, the verb تلبس pronounced "talbis" means "she wears," the same verb تلبس pronounced "tulbas" means "she is worn" (probably referring to a feminine item of clothing like جلابة or عباية). Without the short vowels, the active voice and passive voice verbs look exactly alike, so you should write them into the passive voice verbs to distinguish them. Any verb that is made up of more than three letters will act the same way, so a great long verb like استخدم (istakhdama, to use) is pronounced "ustukhdima" in the perfect tense and "yustakhdam" in the imperfect.

The second difference is that the Arabic passive voice does not need the subject, and doesn't have a word "by." So you can't really say "A book was read by me," just "A book was read." If the subject is known, write the sentence in the active voice. Here are some examples:

كُتِبَ الكتاب في المكتبة

"kutiba al-kitaab fi-l-maktaba"

The book was written in the library.

يُعرَف الولد في كلّ المدرسة

"yu3raf al-walad fi kull-il-madrasa"

The boy is known in all the school. 

ستُرى الأميرة قبل الرقص

"satura al-ameera qabla ar-raqS"

The princess will be seen before the dance. 

Inshallah these lessons make sense. Again, since both adverbs and passive voice rely on short sound changes, they're not the best topic for teaching online and not in person. Let me know if you have questions!