The Maadhi Verb

Verbs come in three tenses: past, present, and future.

Verbs also have a command form. This is when you are speaking and commanding someone else to carry out an action: eat, sleep, sit, etc.

In our first Sarf lesson, our aim is to take the most basic verb, فَعَلَ, and be able to fully conjugate it in its Maadhi (past tense) form.

Verbs have a 'Person'. This refers to whether the subject of the verb (the one performing the verb) is absent and being spoken about (Third Person), is present and being spoken to (Second Person), or is present and is the one speaking (First Person). In English, we use pronouns to convey the Person, and in doing so, we can also provide additional information regarding the gender, plurality, and presence of the subject. You will be familiar with the following, which we call a Verb Conjugation Table:

Arabic has its own version with three significant differences. First, it introduces the concept of dual. In English, we say 'he/she' for singular and 'they' for two or more, while in Arabic, the equivalent of 'they' is only used if there are three or more. For two, a dual form is used.

Second, unlike the second person in English, which uses 'you' regardless of gender and number, Arabic takes both gender and number into account. The only direct similarity between the two languages is found in the first person, where neither language expresses the gender, nor do they have a special form for the dual.

The final difference is that there is no neutrality in Arabic. A pen in English has no gender, so we would say, "It broke." But a pen, and indeed every noun, in Arabic has a gender. It is either masculine or feminine, and in the case of the pen, it is masculine. This means when using pronouns, a pen and a man would be treated exactly the same, and we would say for both, "He broke." When translating back to English, we would of course say, "It broke," in reference to the pen to align with English grammar.

To give you some time to think about the question above, let's discuss another concept regarding verbs which is their 'voice'. Verbs are either Active (مَعْلُوْم) or (مَجْهُوْل) . The active voice is when the subject of the sentence (remember the subject refers to the one we are talking about) is the one performing the verb, and the passive (مَجْهُوْل) voice is when the subject of the sentence is the one receiving the action. Take the sentence, 'I ate the apple'. 'I' is the subject of the sentence and 'ate' is the verb - the action performed. If we instead shifted our focus to the object of the verb, the apple, we could say: 'The apple was eaten', or even, 'The apple was eaten by me,' if we still wished to preserve the information about who was doing the eating. 'The apple' went from being the object of the verb in the first sentence, to being the subject in the second. This can be tricky to wrap your head around at first, and don't worry too much about getting it 100%. You will see plenty of examples in the future which will solidify the active (مَعْلُوْم) and passive (مَجْهُوْل) voices in your mind.

Now we are ready to see the Arabic conjugation table. The total number of rows will be 14. The third person differentiates between masculine and feminine giving 2. It differentiates between number also, singular, dual, and plural, giving 2x3 = 6 conjugations for the 3rd person. The second person works just like the third giving another 6. We now have 12. And for the 1st person, we have no gender, and no dual, just the singular 'I' and plural 'We' giving us 14.

The verb فَعَلَ literally means 'he did', and it is the word that is used by default to practice Sarf. The idea is if you can conjugate فَعَلَ, then you can conjugate any other word that follows the same pattern, such as ضَرَبَ. You just substitute the letters and follow the learned pattern.

We can think of فَعَلَ as the token word used to practice our Sarf. Take نَصَرَ, it rhymes completely with فَعَلَ, as do ضَرَبَ ، كَتَبَ ، سَجَدَ ، وَجَدَ. And so whatever applies to فَعَلَ from a Sarf perspective will apply to these words as well.

You should learn this table fully and be able to recite it from memory fluently. There is no need to rush and have it perfect before moving on to other lessons, however, so take your time. And if you look carefully, you will notice that the only difference between the active and passive is the beginning. Instead of -فَعَ it is -فُعِ, with the rest of the word being unchanged. Therefore, don't think of it as having to remember 28 conjugations. Instead, it's just 14, with the beginning changed slightly for the passive.

Finally, in order to negate the مَاضِي verb we use the Harf مَا. So ذَهَبَ means 'he went', مَا ذَهَبَ means 'he did not go'.