Learn feminine and masculine nouns in Arabic
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Intro |
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| Hi everybody! Nora here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Arabic questions. |
| The Question |
| The question for this lesson is: Are there feminine and masculine inanimate objects in Arabic? |
| Explanation |
| Well, I have some good news and some bad news. |
| The good news is that unlike French and Spanish, Arabic doesn’t have gender-specific articles, like la and le in French, or la and el in Spanish. YAY. In Arabic, we use the definite article al- for both genders, and there are no indefinite articles at all. Double YAY. |
| There’s more good news. You can tell what gender a noun is from its structure. If you see a ة (ah) sound commonly known as tāʾ marbūṭah at the end of a word, then it’s definitely feminine and will be conjugated as such. For example, |
| šaǧarah, شجرة meaning “tree.” |
| Now for the bad news. There are a lot of nouns that don't end in a tāʾ marbūṭah, but they’re still feminine nouns. However, there aren't a lot of them, and once you know that they’re feminine nouns, you just have to memorize them. |
| An example of this is |
| sahraa' صحراء meaning “desert.” |
| The final part of the noun aa' is an indication that the word is most likely a feminine noun. It could also be a masculine noun, like the word maa' ماء, meaning “water,” which is masculine, so this rule only works with certain structures. |
| But there isn't always a helpful indication. For instance, the word شمس (šams), meaning "sun," is a feminine word. See a ة? Nope. You have to consciously remember that it’s a feminine noun. |
| The last thing you need to know about Arabic feminine and masculine nouns is that they change the conjugation of any verb or adjective that describes them. |
| For example, we’ll look at a Noun-Adjective-Verb sentence for a masculine noun and for a feminine noun. |
| الفتى الطويل يغني |
| al fata al tawīlu yuġannī. |
| “The tall boy is singing.” |
| الفتاة الطويلة تغني |
| al fatātu al tawīlatu tuġannī. |
| “The tall girl is singing.” |
| See the slight difference in conjugation? Namely the ta’ marbuta in the end of “al-tawilah” and the ta’ in the beginning of “tughanni”. Although this might seem challenging at first, it’ll feel like second nature with practice. |
Outro |
| If you have any more questions, please leave a comment below! |
| Bye! إلى اللقاء (ʾilā al-liqaāʾ) |
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