The Mudaari Verb

The meanings of a مضارع

The مُضَارِع verb is the Imperfect Verb. Recall that the مضارع is used for both the present and the future tense, and it can be translated in 3 different ways. The context in which the verb appears would decide which meaning is intended. Let's take a look at the مضارع verb يَعْبُدُ and its passive version يُعْبَدُ which comes from the root letters ع ب د which is associated with the concept of worship.

The method of construction (Active)

The مضارع is constructed from the ماضي, so we begin with our token Sarf verb, فَعَلَ. The first thing we do is add a prefix to the ماضي which is one of the letters of the word أَتَيْنَ with a fathah, that is, the ماضي will receive one of the letters أَ تَ يَ نَ at the beginning.

The يَ prefix will be attached to 4 of the 14 conjugations - the 3rd person masculine (#1, #2, #3), and the 3rd person plural feminine (#6).

The تَ will appear in 8 - the two remaining 3rd person feminines, that is the singular and dual (#4, #5), and all 6 of the 2nd person, both masculine and feminine (#7-#12).

This leaves just two more conjugations, and two unused letters. The أَ is used for #13, the singular 1st person, and the نَ for the 1st person plural.

The next step is to make the Faa letter saakin. Therefore, taking into account the prefix, and the faa letter being saakin, this is how the beginning of each conjugation would sound, ignoring the rest of the word as we have not yet discussed them:

You should practice this until you can recite all 14 prefixes correctly in order.

Next, there are 5 conjugations that have no special suffixes, and the Laam letter will be fixed on dammah. For example, يَفْعَلُ. As for the 'Ain letter, it can receive any of the three vowels, Dammah, Fathah, or Kasrah. Usually, the dictionary will be required to tell us which one is correct. In the case of فَعَلَ, the vowel is a Fathah, so we have يَفْعَلُ.

The Five "Singulars"

We will deal with what we call The Five "Singulars", as they are the easiest to construct. They refer to conjugations 1, 4, 7, 13 and 14. They are the easiest to construct as there is no special suffix for them. And therefore we can fill 5 of our 14 conjugations.

You will notice that #4 and #7 are identical. The context will tell you if it is 3rd person singular feminine, or 2nd person singular masculine.

The four duals

This stage will add another 4 conjugations to our table, and they are the 4 duals. To represent the dual, the suffix انِ- (aani) is used. We already know the prefix for all of the conjugations, so we simply attach the suffix and we are done, remembering to put a fathah on the Laam letter as any letter before an Alif must have a fathah on it.

The Masculine Plurals

The masculine plurals are quite simple to construct. They have the suffix وْنَ- placed at the end.

The Remaining Feminine (Plural & Second Person Singular)

We begin with the Second Person Singular as that is very easy. Similar to the plural masculine, the 2nd person singular feminine is just the suffix يْنَ (eeyna), so we get تَفْعَلِيْنَ.

Finally, we have just the feminine plurals left. Let's take a look at #6 of the ماضي which is فَعَلْنَ. The نَ preceded by a sukoon for the 3rd person plural feminine is exactly what is used for both the feminine plurals in the مضارع. This now gives us the entire active مضارع table.

The method of construction (Passive)

You might be worried we have to repeat the entire process for the passive and that we are only halfway through the lesson. But don't worry, just like the ماضي, this is not the case. For constructing the passive, all we have are 2 steps:

1. Make the sign of مضارع dammah
2. Make the 'Ain letter a fathah

If the letters in question already have the correct vowel, such as in يَفْعَلُ where the 'Ain letter already has a fathah, then you don't need to do anything to the letter as it is already done.

The translation of يُفْعَلُ would be "it is done/it is being done/it will be done" It doesn't really make sense to say "he was done/he is being done/he will be done", but since pronouns can refer to both people and things, we would use the pronoun here to refer to a thing. So maybe a job needed doing, and you can say, يُفْعَلُ, it is being done. If you want a passive that lends better for translating all 14 conjugations, then we provide one below: