Mar7aba! In this video, I want to talk about long vowels and the passive voice.
المبني للمجهول وحروف العلّة
and how they work when it comes to weak verbs in Arabic. That is verbs whose
جذر contains a vowel and
Also verbs that have a 'hamza' that sits on a 'kursii,' that is, a 'chair', that is a vowel. In this video
I'm assuming that you're familiar with both basic verb conjugations and how to make verbs passive in Arabic, and
I'll be focusing on some of the important differences that may arise when we were working
With those verb patterns. I do want to mention that in this video,
I'm not going to delve into every single exception with every single
conjugation of every possible verb that might arise--that would be a long and tedious
video and you might not want to watch it.
But what I do want to do is give you some basic guiding principles that can help you predict
how the vowels in these verbs will change in the passive voice.
Basically, the main rule is that the long vowel in a verb in the passive voice is going to change to reflect
the voweling placed upon it by the passive construction. If there isn't a vowel on
A certain letter of the جذر then sometimes the preceding vowel will dictate what form it'll take.
So, one basic example: if we
remember form III and the basic form III pattern in Arabic, we've got فاعَلَ
There is our template. Every form III verb in the past tense is sort of going to be built off of that
map. So we have
the verb
شاهدَ which can mean 'to see, to view,' past tense,
fatha, fatha, fatha, just like our template. Fine. we're good. Now
in the passive voice,
we know that
the vowels in the past tense are going to be 'Dhamma' and 'kasra' on the first two syllables
instead of fatha and fatha.
What that means
is for this voweling--شاهد is not a weak verb by the way. It's a regular verb, but this just illustrates
what's going to happen. We're going to need to take this Dhamma, and if it comes right before a
long vowel,
that doesn't have a separate marker on it, work that Dhamma is going to dictate
the shape that vowel will take, so in form III in the passive voice, actually every single verb
Is going to follow the pattern
فُوعِلَ
So the strength of that 'Dhamma' has bent this 'alif' in the active voice pattern
Into its own shape, to make its own sound. It's kind of imposed its will on
that vowel. So if we wanted to say
'He was seen,' or 'it was seen' conjugated for the masculine, we would actually say
شوهِدَ
Instead of شاهدَ
It looks a little silly the first time you see it,
But that is really what we do.
And if we were talking about something grammatically feminine and saying هي, she or it was seen, we would just add our regular
suffix ending:
شوهِدَتْ
She was seen. Note that the present tense passive,
We're going to retain that 'alif' again because of
the vowel pattern
that's imposed. The difference between
active and passive is actually this 'fatha' here:
يفاعِل would be the active pattern and يفاعَل with a fatha is the passive pattern, so we were saying 'he is
seen,'
We would have an 'alif' once again.
يُشاهَد, because we have that 'fatha,' and it's dictating its will
to this vowel.
So when it comes to weak verbs,
again, verbs that have a 'waaw' or a 'yaa' as part of their جذر,
we can also often use this principle to determine what's going to happen.
It can seem random if we're reading a text that has passive verbs and
letters are shifting, but it is predictable. There are patterns that are there. So take for example the verb
دعى which means
'to call,'
دعى what we call a فعل ناقص, its last letter is
the last letter of the جذر, I should say, is a vowel. And if we want to put in the passive,
because of
the
passive stem and the vowels that are an integral part of making a verb passive, we can predict
what that vowel is going to look like. So, in a form I
passive verb,
we're going to need
these vowels: I suppose 'fatha' is optional, depending on the conjugation,
but we're going to have a 'Dhamma' here, and then a 'kasra.' And the kasra is going to similarly
make its will known on that vowel. The actual جذر is 'daal,'
'ein,' 'waaw,' and in a normal active present tense conjugation we would see that 'waaw,'
but in a case like this where we want to say 'he was called,'
because of that 'kasra' making the 'i' sound that corresponds to the long 'ii' sound of a 'yaa,' it's going to become a 'yaa.'
So 'he was called' would be
دُعِيَ
fully vocalized in فصحى, or 'she was called,' we would just add our
conjugation on the end: دُعِيَتْ or if 'I was called,' دُعِيتُ
This will work for all the derived forms as well.
In the case of أفعال ناقصة and the present tense, again, because of the passive vowel pattern,
يُفعَل
that 'fatha'
is going to change this vowel
into an 'alif maksuura,' actually so 'he is called'
Would be يُدعَى,
Etc. So for a hollow verb like قال or زار
once again, we look at this past tense
passive pattern, and we noticed that we have a kasra right where that middle radical, that middle
letter is. so the kasra going to affect it similarly. قال,
'he said,' but it wanted to say 'it was said,' in the past it would be
قِيلَ or زار would become
زِيرَ again because of that kasra that's part of our passive pattern.
Similarly in the present tense يُفعَل, we have a fatha which is going to
make it look like
this: we retain that Dhamma that's part of the passive pattern, we have يُقَال, 'it is said,' the present tense, or
يُزار, ''he or it is visited
passive voice.
We can also use this same idea to determine
(excuse me) the vowel that's going to serve as the كرسي, the 'chair'
of a 'hamza.' You've probably noticed that lots of verbs have hamza sitting on a
vowel; either an 'alif' or a 'waaw' or sometimes a
'yaa' with no dots.
So
if we took a verb like
قرأ
'to read,'
Once again, we apply the same principles. So the past tense we have
قُرِئَ
and because of that kasra,
the 'alif' that is the كرسي, the 'chair' again
that's just what we call it, that the hamza is sitting on is going to turn me into a
'yaa.'
So instead of saying
قرأتُ الكتاب, 'I read the book,' for example, we could say 'the book was read.' And it would look like
That or if we were talking about an article instead, a مقالة
which is feminine with 'taa marbuuta,' thought we could say or write قُرِئَت
So once we internalize this system a little bit, it can help take the guesswork out of what to do with the vowels
in our verbs. And it can also make
pronunciation a little bit easier if we're reading a text aloud for any reason.
One more time,
this is a very
general set of rules, and there are going to be exceptions just because of the way that Arabic grammar works and sometimes we're going to need
to avoid multiple 'sukuuns' in a string on formal Arabic words,
but once you get this basic idea down it will help you a lot in terms of making any verbs with vowels
passive, and writing them correctly when the need arises.