Merhaba
Right now we're going to talk about derived Arabic verb patterns, or what we call in Arabic
أوزان الفعل
Awzaan are one of the big concepts
that we have to remember when we're looking at Arabic words just as words. The other one which you're probably familiar with is
Called جذر which we sometimes refer to as a 'root' in English: the usually three-letter
combination that has an intrinsic core meaning
so for example you probably know several words already from the جذر 'kaff-taa-baa'
We take that جذر and we can use it to make words like
كتاب
'book', or
مكتبة
'library' or كاتِب
'writer', all of its return to this intrinsic idea of
writing, that's the idea that they have at their core.
وزن
the singular of أوزان
and when we talk about وزن
Really it means any word pattern. So technically,
'Maktaba,' we add the م and the ة,
'Kaatib', we add this ا, 'kitaab', an ا there; all of those we can refer to أوزان they just mean
patterns: the extra bells and whistles that we add to a جذر to turn it into a particular word
Right now, though, we're focusing on the أوزان of derived verbs.
This is because
The أوزان can affect the meaning and knowing them is really going to help us
Incorporate more vocabulary make up our own vocabulary and deal with the other grammar that we're going to encounter as we learn Arabic.
So,
When we talk about أوزان in the abstract we usually use this placeholder جذر
'faa-'ayn-lamm', it's just kind of a dummy. We put it there
because we're not talking about anything else right? We're just talking about that in the abstract.
فعل is actually a فصحى verb meaning 'to do', so that's the reason that we use it in these patterns.
When we want to create a meaningful, word though,
we swap out the ف
ع and ل
With the letters of a meaningful جذر, which we'll see in just a moment. When we're talking about أوزان in the abstract, its
convention in Arabic, it's sort of a tradition of traditional Arabic education in Arabic
to refer to the أوزان by their
conjugation in the past tense.
So I would call this وزن أفعَلَ for example. In Europe and North America,
there's another, different tradition, where Roman numerals have sort of been assigned arbitrarily to them
So if someone says pattern IV or 'wazn IV' or 'wazn af'ala',
they're talking about the same thing.
So if I want to put a جذر into a وزن, I just follow these templates as exactly as I can. For example,
We know a verb, يَدرُس,
'he studies', or 'to study' in the infinitive, and suppose that I want to put it into
Pattern 2, وزن فَعَّلَ, to change the meaning.
I've got this core meaning of studying,
but I want to change it. What I'm going to do, sticking with the هو conjugation in the present tense, is
follow this pattern exactly, except that I'm going to swap out
this 'faa' for 'daal,' this 'ayn' for 'raa,' and the 'laam' for 'siin.'
But I'm going to keep these vowels, so instead of يَدرُس. I wind up with
يُدَرِّس
because I've got a ضمة,
The فتحة here and the شدّة with a كسرة there. So I wind up with a word with a meaning that's related
but not identical
يُدَرِّس
conjugated means 'he teaches,' 'to teach,' as opposed to يَدرُس, 'to study.'
This is a really, really common relationship that we see between a
Form I verb, the most basic kind we've got, and a form II verb,
The form II verb--excuse me, the form II 'wazn,' the template kind of has this meaning of making someone or something do
form I. We know it doesn't always work that way in real life, but ostensibly, someone who teaches is someone who makes someone else study,
right?
This can seem a little abstract and cold and algebraic,
And I wouldn't really recommend that you attempt to memorize this chart in its entirety as is. Instead,
I think maybe a better approach is to
memorize, or maybe remember, that you already know a bunch of verbs that fit in those patterns.
I've provided some here. If you've completed the first book of Al-Kitaab, you should probably know and remember most of them. يُدَرِّس
meaning 'teach,' يشاهد
Meaning 'to watch or view,' يُمكِن meaning 'to be possible,'
يتذكَّر which means 'to remember', يتبادل, which means
'to exchange back and forth with each other,'
ينقطع, 'to be cut off'
يستمِع
'to listen,' يَحمرّ, which means to turn red, like if you get a sunburn, or if you are a tomato ripening on the vine,
or
يستمتع, form X, 'to enjoy something'
The thing to realize is that all of these أوزان carry slightly different shades of meaning, so this is one example that we saw
Another example is that form VII
انفعَلَ
always, always has a passive meaning, so if we say for example that
انقطعَتْ العلاقة
You had a حبيب, you had a حبيبة, but something happened things went wrong, وانقطعَتْ العلاقة
No, one is being blamed here.
the relationship 'was cut off'; always always passive. We're not ascribing an
action to a particular person. Or I could say انقطع الكهرباء,
'the electricity was cut off,' by whom I don't know exactly but I'd like to give them a piece of my mind.
It's a great way to avoid responsibility, actually.
If we took 'daal-raa-siin' and put it into this pattern I could say for example, hmm...
الكتاب اِندَرَسَ
'the book was studied.'
We don't know by whom, maybe not anyone in particular,
but if I really don't want to take ownership of not having done my homework, "John did you study the book?" "الكتاب اندَرَسَ"
So the أوزان allow us to play with language in this way, and get very specific shades of meaning.
For the moment, it's important just to recognize that those relationships exist.
We're going to have individual videos featuring just one or two أوزان at a time,
to talk about the relationships that they have with each other,
and talk about the intrinsic meanings that they carry for verbs.
For now just know, understand, that understanding these أوزان and how they work together is a big part of
using Arabic in the most precise and poetic way possible: that's what the أوزان allow us to do.