Year 1 Review: The Verbless Sentence

,Marhaba ya shabab

As the year comes to a close in such a strange way, I understand that some of you will be despairing about what you really learned of Arabic. And the answer is: a lot! But it's only natural, if speaking Arabic is not part of your day, to think that it's  simply gone in one ear and out the other. So over our last few weeks, to defeat this feeling and prepare you for your superhero final, I want to offer some review lessons in the basic grammar of Arabic 

Verbless sentences, or sentences that would rely on an “is/are/am” in English, can be made in Arabic by managing the definiteness of the terms. Definite terms fall into three types: words with alif-lam (“the”), proper nouns like names or countries, and nouns with possessive suffixes. Possessive suffixes are how Arabic makes things “mine” or “yours” or “his,” and here they are in red in this handy chart

أنا	ـ ي	نَحْنُ	- نا
أنتَ	- كَ	أنتُم	- كُم
أنتِ	- كِ	أنتن	- كنَّ
هوَ	- هُ	هُم	- هُم
هيَ	- ها	هنّ	- هُنَّ

   

Any noun with one of these suffixes is automatically definite and can’t take alif-lam (that would be like saying “the my dog”). 

Definiteness is important because it governs whether or not you have a sentence. A verbless sentence (“the dog is big” or “the small door is green”) will have both a definite and an indefinite element, while a non-sentence noun-adjective phrase like “the big dog” or “the small green door” will have all definite terms. See the examples here:

الكلب كبير

The dog is big

السيارة الصغيرة خضراء

The small car is green.

الكلب الكبير

The big dog

السيارة الصغيرة الخضراء

The small green car

كلب كبير

A big dog

سيارة صغيرة خضراء

A small green car

You’ll notice in the previous examples that both the nouns and adjectives agree in gender as well. That applies whether or  not you have a sentence. Gender is so important in Arabic that everything in the universe is either a “he” or a “she,” there is  ة no such thing as an “it.” With very few exceptions, nouns that are feminine have the ta’ marbuta feminine marker

You will also see that there is no word “a” in Arabic, just nouns without alif-lam

I hope this short review helped! In the next installment I'll look at perfect and imperfect verb conjugations

Ustaz