Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now, we're going to talk about
verbs in Arabic that have
two
final root letters that are the same, that have a double consonant as
their, as the end of their root. We call this in Arabic الفعل المضعّف,
literally a 'doubled root' is what we're saying. And you probably already know several of these. The verb for 'like' or 'love,'
أحبّ
has two 'baas' at the end of its root or the verb أحسّ,
meaning 'to feel,' has
'haa-siin-siin' as
its root, or the verb for 'getting yourself ready,'
استعدّ
Has 'ayn and two 'daals' as its root. And as you can see in these situations,
هو, conjugated for the past tense, these
letters are often content to cohabitate together under one
'shadda.'
But sometimes, there are irregularities.
Some verbs that come from doubled roots are completely regular. In Forms II, III, V, and VI,
nothing at all changes, and the conjugations, the vowels, remain exactly the same. You know a couple of these, like
'to decide,'
قرّر, or 'to specialize,' تخصّص,
And because of the patterns of these roots,
The two 'Saads' and two 'raas' kind of separate and go their own
separate ways, so nothing needs to change. However, in the other verb patterns,
sometimes situations
arise where because of the rules about how vowels work in formal Arabic, we actually need to
separate those two
root letters from each other. They can't live under one 'shadda' together
anymore.
This is a great big chart. You can find it in other places, but what I want to draw your attention to is the situations
where
the last two root letters of this verb
aren't together. The verb is
ظنّ
meaning 'to think,' as in 'to believe something to be true,' so
In the هو past tense conjugation, which we also have here, ظنّ,
We have a 'nuun' with a 'shadda,' which really represents two 'nuuns.'
However, if I wanted to say 'I
thought in the past tense,' I would say ظَنَنْتُ.
Where I would separate those 'nuuns,'
put a 'sukuun' here, and then add a 'Damma.' The
reason that this happens in فصحى, in Formal Arabic,
is that there is a rule that says we can't have
two letters
both with 'sukuun' on them, right next to each other in a word. And
ostensibly, if we were to try to put these two 'nuuns'
together under one 'shadda' with a 'sukuun,'
They would both be there, and they would both have 'sukuun.' So for that reason,
we need to separate them, and add that 'fatha,' so that we don't violate
this rule of
phonetics in Formal Arabic. You could attempt to
memorize all fourteen of these past tense conjugations, but there is a simpler way to do it, which is to recognize that
all of the first-person and all of the second-person conjugations
separate
those last two root letters, and all of the third-person conjugations, except for one, keep the nuun,
excuse me, the pair of 'nuuns', the doubled consonants, together under one 'shadda.' The only exception is the conjugation for هنّ, the
feminine human plural that we would use for talking about a group of women, where again, because
we have a conjugation with a 'sukuun'
before the suffix, it wouldn't quite work, and we would have too many 'sukuuns,' so we would wind up saying ظنَنَّ
where again, we've kind of separated them, and because of the conjugation. we've actually added a
third 'nuun,' which is now living with the second 'nuun' of the pattern.
In the present tense were almost in the clear. The verbs work almost exactly as
they do in all the other situations that we know. The only exceptions, again, are the
feminine plural
conjugations, where because the conjugation would require us to have too many 'sukuuns,' we actually have to change
The order of where the 'sukuun' would be. We say تظنُنَّ, 'you, feminine plural, think,' or
يَظْنُنَّ, 'they, those women, think, or believe' something. One, two, little wrinkles two little exceptions.
in colloquial Arabic...
Again, remember those rules are فصحى rules. In colloquial Arabic, we have a different, but
simple way of resolving the same thing. Instead of saying ظنَنْتُ in
Levantine or Egyptian Arabic, I would say instead
ظَنَّيت
and I would add an ـَي sound, I would add a 'yaa' at the end of that doubled
consonant. This is pretty consistent for all
of our 'geminate' or 'doubled' verbs in Arabic.
If I wanted to say 'I loved,' in the past tense, but I got over that:
حَبَّيت.
And I would just add that ـَيـ sound
to the end of my regular conjugation.
Here the rule is very consistent. If there are third-person conjugations,
they don't have the ـَيـ
before the conjugation
suffix. We would say she, هي,
'she liked, or 'loved,' or whatever it was,
حَبَّت.
Or هم حبّوا. But if it's first-person or second-person, I need to add that
ـَيـ
before my past tense conjugation suffix.
Other than that, all the rules are the same. It might seem intimidating that there is this exception,
but realize that you have been using these verbs
successfully for a long, long time. And all I've done is to present some
exceptions where in formal writing, or formal speech, we would need to make some slight adjustments.