Sabaa7 al-kheir! In this video, I want to talk with you about
Arabic verbs whose first root letter,
whose first letter in their جذر is either a 'waaw' or a 'yaa.' In Arabic, we would call verbs like this الفعل المثال.
Sometimes in English, we refer to them as 'assimilated verbs,' for reasons that you're going to see very soon.
They conjugate slightly differently sometimes, and in this video, what I want to do is bring your attention to some of the more important
exceptions and idiosyncrasies in terms of how they work.
Of those two letters, 'waaw' tends to be more common of the two.
We have a lot more verbs in Arabic whose جذور start with 'waaw' than start with 'yaa,'
And that's when the majority of this video's focus will be, but we will talk a little bit about verbs whose جذور begin with 'yaa' at at the end as well.
So for most verb patterns, and I'm assuming that you're familiar with Arabic verb patterns here,
these أوزان-- for most أوزان,
a verb isn't going to act any differently
than a regular verb.
They're going to conjugate exactly the same. We're not going to worry about any shifting or changing their disappearing letters. A quick couple of examples:
two related verbs, both of which would mean more or less 'to communicate': واصل and تواصل
The جذر is 'waaw-Saad-laam' in both of these cases, and
We've put them into the verb patterns, and they work just like regular verbs. If we want to add a prefix or say
يواصل or يتواصل they're going to work exactly the same. Or if we wanted to add a
conjugation suffix at the end,
no difference, none whatsoever. There are three main verb patterns where we're going to have to watch for
something a little different. The first of them is form I.
Form I verbs like this with 'waaw' as the first root letter are going to work
normally in the past tense, but in the present tense, we're going to drop that 'waaw,' and replace it with
the suffix or the prefix-suffix combo. So
وجد, for example, is a verb meaning 'to find' in Arabic. But if we wanted to say in the present tense 'he finds'و
We would need to remove that 'waaw' and just replace it with the huwa conjugation. So we wind up with
يَجِد because 'kasra' just happens to be the vowel there. or another verb, وقعwhich can mean
'stand' in a spot or 'fall,' depending on the context, if we wanted to say
'She stands,' 'she is standing,'
We would say تَقِع, so in both cases we've removed the 'waaw'
entirely from the conjugation. That is not the case
with
passive verbs. So if we wanted to make
وجد passive--that's actually a very common way of saying 'there is,' or 'there are,' it's equivalent to
هناك which is word you might know, but we could also say
I'll put it here: يُوجَد. So we retain that passive
vowel combination, the 'Dhamma' and the 'fatha,' and we keep
the 'waaw' in a case like that. Or there's a good example from Qur'an, actually in سورة الإخلاص
There is part of an ayah that reads in part
لم يَلِد ولم يُولَد
ولد is a verb meaning to give birth, and
the subject of these verbs is God, Allah. So لم يَلِد, 'He does not give birth,'
ولم يُولَد, he has not been begotten, so
from our verb, we've removed the 'waaw' when we're talking about
the active voice, and we retain the 'waaw' when we're talking about the passive voice.
In form IV,
things are pretty close to normal, with one important exception and that's creating the مصدر.
We're going to retain the 'waaw' in our form IV pattern, as in the case of
أوضَحَ which means to clarify or أوفَدَ, which means
'to delegate or to send,' and in the present tense
يوضِح and يُوفِد
We keep that 'waaw,' we have our normal vowels but because of the مصدر pattern which is إفعال
We have a 'kasra'
on
this first letter, and the strength of the 'kasra' means that our 'waaw' needs to match that 'kasra,'
So it actually turns into a 'yaa.' So the مصدر of أوضحَ would be
إيضاح
And the مصدر of أوفدَ would be إيفاد
It helps to remember that formal Arabic can't tolerate the vowel combination 'ew.' Because it sounds gross.
So if we tried to retain the 'waaw' here, we would have
'ewDaa7' or 'ewfaad' which are not permissible in Arabic. It's just not something we can do. For
the same reason, in form VIII
something slightly different happens. Form VIII pattern
Is افتَعَلَ
So our 'waaw' would be taking the place of that
'fa,' but once again, if we did that we would have the same problem. Because of the way
these verbs are
structured, we would wind up with an 'ew' sound, so we have a different
solution which is the 'waaw'
assimilates and cohabitates with the 'taa' that's part of the pattern. So
اتّصل, which is a verb meaning to 'be in contact with' or sometimes 'to telephone someone': اتّصل بشخص
There is a 'waaw' that is part of the root, but it's not represented here as a 'waaw.' Instead it is
represented, sort of,
under this 'shadda.' It's as though the 'waaw' has temporarily
Become a 'taa' in order to comply with the rules of Arabic.
Same thing with another: اتّصف, which sort of means 'to be characterized by,'
from
وصف
which means 'description,' that is our جذر. We do have a 'waaw,' but the 'waaw' is
hiding, the 'waaw' is sort of latent in this particular structure.
So as
you're listening and reading it's good to remember that if you encounter a new verb in the present tense whose
root only seems to have two letters, or if you encounter a
verb that only seems to have two letters of a root, but you do have that double 'taa,'
there's a very good chance that what you're actually dealing with is a
فعل مثال
With a 'waaw' that has temporarily disappeared
just because of the rules of Arabic.
So verbs whose roots begin with 'yaa'
are much less common,
but I do want to talk about them a little bit just in case someone tries to claim that they don't exist.
The good news is the 'yaa' isn't going to change or morph or disappear in the same way that 'waaw' does, ordinarily.
So just a couple of examples: the verb
يَبِسَ or يَبُسَ, I've heard both variations, which means 'to go dry or be dry,'
--we might refer to bread that way, stale bread, خبز يابس
Is a verb where in the present tense
We're actually going to have two 'yaas' side-by-side.
يَيبَس-- yay!, it sounds kind of
happy, and يَئِسَ, which means 'to give up' or maybe 'to despair' sometimes:
same thing. If we're saying 'he is giving up,'
we would say
يَيأَس
The 'seat' of the 'hamza' shifts there. That's another
discussion for another time, that's an irregularity of that verb
for different reasons, but we're retaining that 'yaa' in the root. It stays there,
we don't have any problems. And that is الفعل المثال in Arabic.