Tuesday, December 14

Regular Verbs in the Present and Future

In this post, we'll focus on the basics of the present and future tesess of Arabic verbs. It's really quite simple!

To refer to the verb in general, we use the masculine howwa form because it's the simplest. Let's look at two verbs:

yel3ab يلعب - to play
yu5rug يخرج - to go out

We add some letters at the start, and some letters at the end of this stem (prefixes and suffixes) to change the meaning.




prefix/suffix
yel3ab (stem - l3ab)
ana (I)
e7na (we)
a-
ne-
al3ab
nel3ab
enta (you, m)
te-
tel3ab
enty (you, f)
te-/-y
tel3aby
ento (you, pl)
te-/-o
tel3abo
howwa (he)
ye-
yel3ab
heyya (she)
te-
tel3ab
homma (they)




ana (I)
e7na (we)
enta (you, m)
enty (you, f)
ento (you, pl)
howwa (he)
heyya (she)
homma (they)
ye-/-o



prefix/suffix
a-
nu-
tu-
tu-/-y
tu-/-o
yu-
tu-
yu-/-o
yel3abo



yu5rug (stem - 5rug)
a5rug
nu5rug
tu5rug
tu5rugy
tu5rugo
yu5rug
tu5rug
yu5rugo



Verbs fit into either of the above patterns, the only difference is the vowel used in the prefix (e, or u). The most common is the prefix vowelled with -e-, the first pattern used with yel3ab.

The final step is to decide whether you want the verb to be present or future. For the present, add a be- onto the forms above. For the future, add 7a- to the correct form (shortened to b- and 7- before a vowel).

benel3ab بنلعب - We play
7anel3ab حنلعب - We will play

bu5rug بخرج - I go out
7a5rug حخرج - I will go out

You don't need to use pronouns (ana, enta etc.) because the verb will make it clear what or who you are talking about.

bu5rug men el-beet es-saa3a setta we rob3
بخرج من البيت الساعه سته و ربع
I leave the house at 6:15

el-5amees we el-7ad benesaafer aswaan
الخميس و الحد بنسافر اسوان
On Thursday and Sunday we travel to Aswaan

eg-gom3a 7ayerooh en-naady ma3a as7aabo
الجمع حيروح النادي مع الصابو
On Friday he goes to the club with his friends

You'll have noticed that the enta and heyya forms are identical. So for clarification, sometimes we do use the pronoun in this case.

bokra heyya 7atel3ab basketball
بكره هي حتلعب بسكتبول
Tomorrow she'll play basketball

And the pronoun is sometimes used for emphasis, like in a comparison or contrast.

howwa beyel3ab basketball bass ana bal3ab tennis
هو بيلعب بسكتبول بس اتا بلعب تنس
He plays basketball but I play tennis.

4 comments:

Sam Welbeck said...

OMG this is brilliant! Why have I not seen this blog before?

Jaz said...

Thanks! I'm a big fan of your blog :D

Unknown said...

Thank you so much. Awesome, I went through all lessons it is really very useful post for me. Regular Verbs in the Present and Future are so clear. I just love your blog. Thanks for all the posts.
Spanish school Costa Rica

Mohsin said...

It will be more beneficial if you create a video for each lesson. You can create youtube channel for that.