Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now, we're going to talk about the grammar of
present-tense verb forms in formal Arabic. And once again, the present tense
in Arabic we call المضارع. If you watched our first video on how to
conjugate present-tense verbs, you notice that the formal conjugations had some
variations sometimes. And that's sort of what we're going to talk about right now,
is the variation. In fact the present tense can take three forms: المرفوع,
المنصوب, والمجزوم. Now as you can see in this chart, the differences are fairly
minor: in most of them, it's just a difference in the vowel that comes on
the end of the verb, and probably the biggest difference is in the
conjugations that take a final 'nuun,' أنت أنتم هم, in the مرفوع, and in
منصوب and مجزوم they lose their 'nuun.' it's important, I'm going to reiterate
that these are formal constructions. We don't have to worry about any of this
when we're speaking colloquial Arabic. This is strictly a فصحى grammar thing. And
in fact, except in really formal settings like speeches given by heads of state, or
reading holy texts, things like that, we're typically not going to hear these
vowels in regular speech, even if people are speaking فصحى, for example,
in a conversation on television, in an interview setting, perhaps, a lot of the
time it's sort of something that just isn't used, right? It's not it's not
necessary, vitally necessary for comprehension. But as an Arabic
learner, it's an important part of knowing how to deliver formal speech, and
especially if we're listening to a prepared text, like a newscast, it might
come in handy. We need to be able to recognize these
forms. So as I said, 'Damma' we here on مرفوع for most of these, or a final
'nuun,' and then that final vowel is replaced by 'fatha' for منصوب or just a
'sukuun,' right, no vowel sound at all for مجزوم. And we lose the 'nuun' again on
both of these. Now, مرفوع is the default present tense form, right? If we
have no other feature in our sentence that's going to necessitate using
another verb form, another verb form منصوب or مجزوم, then we're going to use
مرفوع. In a simple sentence like 'I study Arabic,' right? If we wanted to say
it with all of our vowels, we would say
أدرسُ العربية
Or 'she works in a bank.'
تعملُ في بنك.
'She works in a bank.' So we could include that 'Damma' if for some
reason we were speaking very very formally. منصوب is a form that we see
usually because we're using a connecting particle that requires it.
These include words like أنْ, which we use to connect verbs, right? It's sort of
functions as the 'to' between two verbs that we hear in English, right. 'He likes
to go,' 'she wants to see,' and we'll have some examples. Also the لِـ, meaning 'in
order to,' right? 'I'm going to the library to study.'
And also after لَن, which is the particle that we're going to use for
negating the future. So for example, if I want to say 'she likes to read,' we
can use أن to connect those two verbs. So we're going to say 'she likes,'
تحبُّ
and here we're using مرفوع, that default form, but then we use أنْ
to connect those two verbs: 'she likes to read,' تقرأ, and then we're going to
use the منصوب formو I'm just going to put that little 'fatha' on the end, as
kind of a decoration. Or لِـ, 'I'm going to the library to study.'
أذهب إلى المكتبة لأدرس
But if we're going to fully vocalize these sentences
أذهبُ إلى المكتبة
مرفوع, because we have no reason to change things,
إلى المكتبة لِأدرس
But we have this لِـ, so I know that أدرس is going to be منصوب.
Or, if we wanted, for example, to say, 'I'm not going to the library to study.' Instead we would say
لن أذهبَ
Also منصوب, right, because it follows this particle لن.
Finally, مجزوم, we most often see it and hear it after the particle لم,
which we use to negate the past, or to create a negative past-tense sense in
formal Arabic. You'll notice that with لن here, even though we're talking
about the future, 'I will not go to the library to study,'
it's conjugated to very much like a present tense verb, even though we're
discussing something involving in the future. So similarly, with لم, if I want
to say 'I didn't go to the library,' for example, I would say
لم إذهبْ إلى المكتبة.
And here, since it follows لم, it would have a 'sukuun,' it would be in مجزوم
form, right? So once again مرفوع, default form, if we have no other reason.
منصوب, often we see it after أن or لِـ or لن.
مجزوم, we often see this
form after لم. Before we finish up, I want to point out that these different
verb forms can seem kind of intimidating when they're presented all at once like
this, and it can be intimidating to feel like you need to memorize them all, right?
Especially without the context of a grammatical function to work on, right? It
can almost be a chicken-and-egg thing. 'I'm uncomfortable using أنْ to connect
verbs because I don't have a handle on the منصوب, but I don't really know
the منصوب too well, because I haven't really focused on connecting verbs yet,'
So we have separate videos on using most of these different particles, we're going
to have a video on أنْ, and we have video on لن and لم, and we're going to
reiterate that we need to use these specific verb forms, so in order to keep
your mental load manageable, think, focus on associating a grammatical function, a
grammatical task with these forms when they require them, right? And you can come
back and look at this as a reference if you want to compare and contrast, look at
the differences, and sort of give yourself that breadth of understanding.
But as you're focusing on specific ways to say specific things, just remember to
associate specific verb forms, specific conjugations, or specific forms I should
say of المضارع with the grammatical task that requires them, 87 00:08:31,960 --> 00:00:00,000 and that will keep things manageable for you.