Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now, we're going to talk about the root and pattern system
in Arabic, or what we call in Arabic الجذر, meaning a 'root,' and and الوزن,
meaning a 'pattern.' The vast majority of Arabic words are derived from a three-
consonant root. A tri-consonantal root, a جذر. And it's important to be able to
kind of figure out what that root is, because we're going to need to know what
that root is in order to look up a word in a dictionary. So even if we don't know
a word, we're going to need to kind of be able to figure out a root. As you learn
more vocabulary, it's going to become easier and easier for you to do that. For
now, it's a good idea to start paying attention to the consonants of words as
you learn them, and matching up specific words you know that share
patterns, so we can get good at recognizing those patterns, those جذور.
So let's take a look at these examples, these four examples right here.
If we were going to look any of them up in a dictionary, we would need to figure
out what the root is. And these all might be words that you have learned,
right? كتاب which means book in Arabic, مكتب which means a desk or an office,
تكتب, the conjugated verb for 'she writes.' and كاتب, which means writer.
So if we were going to figure out what that three-letter root is, there are
certain things that we can eliminate straight off. For example, this 'miim' in
مكتب isn't really shared by any of the other words, we have an 'alif,' a long 'alif' here, and
a long 'alif' here, but they're not in these others, so they're probably not
part of the route, and eventually it's probably pretty clear that all of these
words share three letters in order: 'kaaf, taa, baa.' So we were going to look any of
them up in the dictionary, we would look under 'kaaf, taa, baa,' and we would find
all of these words. The essential meaning of this root has to do with
'writing,' and if we use a little bit of poetic imagination, you know, a book, an
office, the verb 'to write,' a writer, we can see the connection that these words
have sort of in terms of meaning. Let's take another example: واحد, the number
one, وحيد, which can mean 'only' or 'lonely' in Arabic, and وحدة which depending on
the context could mean 'unity' or 'loneliness,' right? What's the common
denominator? Well, we have a 'taa marbuuTa' here, that's not going to be part
of the root, okay, we have a 'yaa,' there's no 'yaa,' there's no 'alif' in these other
words, so those probably are not part of the root, and we're left with 'waaw-haa-
daal,' which is a root that at its core means, has a sort of basic root
meaning of only-ness, loneliness or oneness, essentially right? So this is the
kind of process that we're going to need to go through, and again, for now, as you
acquire vocabulary, think about the consonants and whether they might match
up with other words that you know, and that's a skill that's going to develop
with time. Another thing to start paying attention to is وزن, pattern right? The
the way in which these جذور, these roots, are added into kind of an
exoskeleton, to create meeting. Here are some words
that you might have encountered: لطيف، جميل، غريب، طويل.
They all share the same kind of rhythmic stress. We have a 'fatha' sound, and then
a long 'yaa' as the third letter of the word, and they're all adjectival in
meaning, right? لطيف, which means 'kind,' or 'nice,' جميل, meaning 'beautiful,' غريب
meaning 'strange,' طويل meaning 'tall' or 'long,' and if you listen again to that vowel
stress, 'fatha,' long 'yaa,' think about وحيد, right, and remember what it
means? It means 'only' or 'lonely,' It's also an adjective that shares this وزن.
There are a lot of different أوزان out there--أوزان is the plural of وزن,
singular. Again, for now, it's important to tune your ear to the music of those أوزان
and those جذور, and start making those connections, because when it comes
time to start looking up words and dictionaries, it will be very very useful
to you, and actually once you've developed sort of a large enough
toolbox of words, and started to cultivate that intuitive understanding,
it can help you decipher the meaning of words without using a dictionary at all.
Which is going to be very helpful for things like reading speed and 56 00:05:27,300 --> 00:00:00,000 comprehension.