The Arabic Sciences

There are 3 Arabic Sciences:

Knowledge in all these sciences is required in order to communicate effectively in Arabic. The first two, Sarf and Nahw, are fundamental, and understanding Arabic is impossible without them. They are taught from the beginner stage right through to the advanced stage.

Balaagha, on the other hand, is considered an advanced topic, and its teaching is delayed until the student is deep in their studies.

Below, we introduce these Arabic sciences by looking at English examples. Arabic examples will come in subsequent lessons.

Sarf

Sarf (Morphology) is the most fundamental of the 3 sciences. Its scope is limited to the word, how it is constructed, and how it can be manipulated through patterns and endings in order to change or enhance the meaning.

For example, let's take the word 'help'. In English 'Sarf' or Morphology, we know that if we add the suffix 'ed' to the word 'help' (helped), then we add an additional meaning of having occurred in the past. It takes the original meaning of aid, and adds the additional connotation that this action occurred in the past.

We can instead add the suffix 'er'. This time we add the meaning of an entity, a thing, which is doing the action (helper).

This is what Sarf in Arabic does. It takes the base form of a word and gives us rules, patterns, and endings which we can use to change or enhance the base meaning.

Nahw

Thanks to the dictionary, we get the base form of words and their meaning (help, love, hate, drink).

Thanks to Sarf, we can take those base forms and enhance the base meanings through patterns and endings (helper, loved, hated, drinks).

Nahw takes it a step further. Where Sarf changes the word itself to add meanings, Nahw takes a group of words and defines rules which allow the words to combine into phrases and sentences in order to achieve the same.

Let's take the words 'book', and 'David'. On their own, they represent two separate things in our minds. English grammar tells us, by inserting the word 'of', or through the use of an apostrophe and 's', we get:

• book of David
• David's book

Both of these are English grammatical rules that combine the two words, 'book' and 'David', which each have a meaning (for a total of 2 meanings), and assign a third meaning of ownership. We now understand that these two entities are linked through ownership. This was only possible through the grammar rule which allows us to construct this phrase.

We can also use grammar to construct a full sentence. 'This book is old', is a full sentence. It takes a subject, 'This book', and conveys some information about it, namely that it is 'old' (the fancy term for this information is the predicate). English grammar states that for this to be a sentence, we need to take the subject 'This book', and the predicate 'old', and separate the two with the word 'is'. This book is old.

Balaagha

Finally, we come to the last science. We now have the base meaning from the dictionary, we can manipulate the word through patterns and endings to enhance the meaning, we can combine words through grammatical rules to enhance the meaning further and create sentences.

But how do we determine which way of saying something is the most appropriate for the situation we are in? What will be the most persuasive, the most eloquent? This is the purpose of Balaagha (Rhetoric).

For a simple example, take the following two sentences:

• Zaid hit Amr
• Amr was hit by Zaid

Both sentences here are conveying the same 3 fundamental pieces of information:

1. Zaid carried out an action
2. The action was that of hitting
3. Amr was the one who received the action

But if they are conveying the same information, is it just a matter of preference which to use? And the answer is no. For example, let's say the first sentence, 'Zaid hit Amr' is the standard, normal way to say this. But what if you are speaking to Amr's mother? A mother's concern for her child can mean that the information of Amr being hit is far more important and relevant than the information about who hit him. Maybe he was missing? So you bring the information about Amr forward and mention that first.

This is the role of Balaagha. It takes perfectly valid speech, and tells you what techniques and methods of speaking will be the most effective, the most persuasive, and impactful for the situation you are in.