Sabaa7 al-kheir! Right now we're going to talk about
'assimilation' in form VII verbs, or what we would call in Arabic المماثلة.
مماثلة is kind of transformation that occurs within certain combinations of this
verb pattern, form VIII, افتعل, and
roots that begin with certain letters including the ones we have here:
ت ز ذ ص ض ط ظ و in cases where a form VIII verb has a root,
a جذر that begins with one of these letters, certain changes of spelling and pronunciation are going to occur
to the 'taa'
that constitutes part of this
form VIII pattern.
These changes can seem a little bit arbitrary, but in most cases, you'll notice that they actually result in the final product being
easier to pronounce. Certain consonant combinations
are just kind of difficult to say, and the modified construction that we wind up with is
reflective of that reality. And as advanced learners,
we need to be able to recognize this change when it occurs, and understand why it's happening.
So right now what I'm going to do is walk you through a couple of examples, and demonstrate how they differ.
Let's take a look at these
جذور over here, these roots. When we have a 'waaw' as
the first letter of the جذؤ, the root that were putting into the pattern افتعل, وزن افتعل
the 'waaw' is going to disappear. If we did it straight, we would wind up in this case with
'waaw-7aa-daal,' the root that has to do with 'oneness,'
we would wind up with a word, if we ignored this change that happens,
that sounds like "ewwta7ala," and
formal Arabic really doesn't like that vowel combination, "eww," which is easy to remember because
it sounds gross, right? "Eww!" So the solution, what we do instead, is
drop the 'waaw'
and double the 'taa,' so we wind up with
اتّحد, which is a verb that means
"to unite,"
where we get the word متّحدة, in الولايات المتّحدة, "The United States."
When we have a جذر that begins with a 'taa,'
we do sort of the same thing:
we double that 'taa,' and the the two 'taas' cohabitate underneath one 'shadda.' So we have
تبع, a verb that sort of means 'to follow,' but if we want to talk about
'following' in a more abstract sense, 'coming after,'
we do this. Where again, we double the 'taa,' we add a 'shadda' above it, and wind up with اتّبع.
Now with certain sibilants,
Like 'zaa' and 'dhaal,'
what we do is, again,
this 'taa' has to change. And in the case of 'zaa,' it's sort of tricky to pronounce 'zz' and 'taa'
back to back.
If we ran it straight,
without knowing what we know, we wind up with 'izzta7ama,'
so we have that 'zz,' we're using our voice box,
and if you say it fast, you'll find that the 'taa' here winds up sounding like a 'daal' anyway, so when we
pronounce this word, this Form VII verb,
we just say it instead with a 'daal,'
ازدحم which is a verb that means kind of 'to be crowded.' You might remember that from Al-Kitaab, Volume I.
With all of the emphatic
consonants, 'Saad,'
'Daad,' 'Taa,' and 'Zhaa,'
similarly, it's difficult to pronounce a 'taa'
after them and have it retain its non-emphatic qualities.
So what we do instead is we just turn it into a 'Taah,' if it follows a 'Saad' or a 'Daad.'
So in the case of صدم, which means sort of 'to strike,' we can create a verb meaning 'to collide,'
where we take that 'taa,' and we turn it into a 'Taah,' to reflect the sound of the 'Saad.'
And we get--oops, I forgot my line--
اصطدم instead.
ضهد
same thing.
After that 'Daad,' we're going to change the 'taa' of the pattern to a 'Taah,'
To get اضطهد, a verb that means kind of 'oppress.' And with طلع
we're going to change that 'taa to a 'Taah,' but then we're going to have two 'Taahs,' which means that we can do the same
trick we did up here, and put them under
one roof
with a 'shadda.' اطّلع, اطّلع على, meaning kind of 'to get or be acquainted with,' or
'take a look at something.'
One last example with 'dhaal.' This one's a little odd. ذخر, which means 'to store or put away,'
'dhaal' and
'taa' are an odd combination. It's tricky for our mouths to get from 'dh' to 'taa.'
In this case with 'dhaal,' what we do is we actually wind up with a 'daal' sound.
It's the compromise, the in-between, the middle. So if we're putting 'dhaal-khaa-raa'
into the pattern افتعل
we wind up with
ادّخر, a 'daal,' meaning sort of 'to accumulate or amass something.'
That's all compromise. As a learner,
maybe the most important thing is to recognize
these exceptions so that you aren't tripped up by their
strangeness and novelty when you encounter them in the wild. If you see a 'shadda' on what looks like the first
root letter of a word, or if you see
a
verb or a word that looks as though maybe it has an emphatic 'Taah' in a word that has
slightly more
letters than it should for an ordinary جذر,
there's a high likelihood that what you're looking at is a verb that has مماثلة going on in it.
Typically, you aren't going to be constructing many new words on your own,
but if you encounter an unknown word
and you need to look it up in a dictionary or want to try to recognize it from your accumulated previous knowledge,
this should help you narrow it down, and avoid any potential for confusion.