The Three Parts Of Speech

Language is made of words, and words can be grouped together into categories that share characteristics. In this lesson, we will take a look at the most popular English parts of speech and see how they map to the Arabic parts of speech.

Noun

First up are nouns. A noun is a word that refers to

• an entity - a book, a person, an animal
• an idea - justice, freedom
• a quality - hardness, softness
• an action - sleeping, eating, driving

Pronoun

Pronouns are words that are used to refer to a noun that has already been mentioned, which relieves you from having to repeat the noun again. If we say, "David woke up today at 5am. David felt ill so David didn't go to school," that would sound rather odd. What makes it sound odd is saying David over and over again. Instead, once we have made the initial reference to David, we would then use the pronoun 'he' in future references to David. "David woke up today at 5am. He felt ill so he didn't go to school." That sounds much better and more natural. Some other examples of pronouns are: she, her, him, it, they.

Adjective

Adjectives are words that describe nouns. Examples include tall, short, skinny, scrawny, etc.

Adverb

Adverbs are like adjectives, except where adjectives describe a noun, adverbs describe anything other than a noun. For example, 'Zaid is very tall.' Here, 'tall' is an adjective used to describe Zaid. The word 'very' is describing the word 'tall'. Zaid isn't a little tall, or regular tall, he is very tall. So 'very' here is an adverb as it is describing something that is not a noun, in this case, an adjective.

Here is another example: 'Zaid is speaking loudly.' 'Speaking' here is a present tense verb (present continuous in fact), and 'loudly' is describing the manner in which this verb is occurring. As the word being described is not a noun (it is a verb), the word 'loudly' is an adverb.

Verb

We will go into more detail about what verbs are later, but briefly, a verb is an action that is linked with time. 'He ate' = The action of eating + occurring in the past.

Article

The words 'the', 'an', and 'a' are articles which are used to show whether a noun is specific (also referred to as definite or proper) or general. For example, 'the apple' vs 'an apple', 'the boy' vs 'a boy'.

Conjunction

Conjunctions are words used to connect two words, phrases, or sentences together e.g., "I like apples and oranges." or "I went to the cafe and I ate lunch."

Preposition

Prepositions are words used before nouns and pronouns to indicate time, place, direction, or location. For example, in the sentence 'I sat on the chair', 'on' is a preposition indicating the location of my sitting in relation to the chair. If you say, "I travelled from England to France," 'from' indicates the origin of the upcoming word, 'England', and 'to' indicates the destination of the upcoming word, 'France'.

How do they all fit with the Arabic parts of speech?

We have covered eight of the most common parts of speech in English. Below, we are going to give you the three parts of speech in Arabic and their precise definitions, and then see where the English parts of speech fit.

Let's tackle the first part of speech, the اِسْم. What does it mean for a word to have a meaning in and of itself? Let's compare two words, 'tree' and 'from'. When you think about the word 'tree', even though you might struggle to give a dictionary-level definition, your mind automatically knows exactly what a tree is. You picture a tall wooden structure with branches, leaves and a bushy green top. And that image in your mind is associated with the tree itself, not something else.

Compare that with the word 'from'. If you really think about the word, you might define it as: 'a word which indicates the origin.' And that is a solid definition. But that meaning of origin, is it the word 'from' itself that is associated with that origin meaning, or is it another word? What if I said, 'from England'? Which of those two words is the origin meaning actually being attributed to? The answer, of course, is England. 'I am from England', means my place of origin is England, not 'from'.

This is what we mean when we say a word indicates a meaning in and of itself. The word 'tree' indicates a meaning - that bushy green thing on top of a brown trunk - that is the tree itself. The word 'from' also indicates a meaning - that of origin - but that meaning isn't associated with the word itself but instead with the upcoming word.

Let's take two more examples: the words 'freedom' and 'the'. We chose 'freedom' because it is not as easy to picture as a tree. But it still has a precise definition in our minds, even if it isn't something we can paint a pretty picture of. We can think a bit, and define 'freedom' as the ability to say, think and do as one wishes. That definition is what freedom represents.

What about the word 'the'? We can say the word 'the' represents specificity, definiteness. But are those meanings associated with the word 'the' itself? Or to another word? If I said, 'the apple', where is the specificity being implied? Is it the word 'the' that is specific, or the word 'apple'? Clearly, we are referring to the apple as being a specific apple and not a generic one.

The second part of the definition is quite straightforward. If the meaning has no time connotation, then it is an اِسْم; otherwise, it is a فِعْل. We can then see that the اِسْم consists of Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, and Adverbs. All of these parts of speech have meanings in and of themselves, and none are connected to time.

فِعْل only contains verbs, as they are the only ones with an intrinsic meaning that is connected to time - past, present, future.

حَرْف contains the rest. Articles, prepositions, and conjunctions come under this category. All of these indicate a meaning for an upcoming word.