Learn about the Arabic tenses
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Intro |
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| Michael: How many tenses are there in Modern Standard Arabic? |
| Nora: And how do they work? |
| Michael: At ArabicPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Sasha Lee is confused about the number of tenses in Arabic. She asks her teacher, |
| "How many tenses are there in Arabic?" |
| كَم زَمَنٌ لِلفِعلِ هُناكَ في اللُغَةِ العَرَبِيَّة؟ (kam zamanun lilfiʿli hunāka fī al-luġaẗi al-ʿarabiyyah?) |
| Dialogue |
| Sasha Lee:كَم زَمَنٌ لِلفِعلِ هُناكَ في اللُغَةِ العَرَبِيَّة؟ (kam zamanun lilfiʿli hunāka fī al-luġaẗi al-ʿarabiyyah?) |
| Nancy Namek:.هُناكَ إثنان. الماضي و المُضارِع (hunāka ʾiṯnān. al-māḍī wa al-muḍāriʿ.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Sasha Lee:كَم زَمَنٌ لِلفِعلِ هُناكَ في اللُغَةِ العَرَبِيَّة؟ (kam zamanun lilfiʿli hunāka fī al-luġaẗi al-ʿarabiyyah?) |
| Michael: "How many tenses are there in Arabic?" |
| Nancy Namek:.هُناكَ إثنان. الماضي و المُضارِع (hunāka ʾiṯnān. al-māḍī wa al-muḍāriʿ.) |
| Michael: "There are two. Past and present." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: In this lesson, you'll learn about the tenses of verbs in Modern Standard Arabic. The tense of the verb mainly refers to the ‘time’ of the action of the verb—whether it’s the present, the past, or the future. To get started, let’s take a closer look at the dialogue. Do you remember how Sasha asks "How many tenses are there in Arabic?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Nora as Sasha Lee:كَم زَمَنٌ لِلفِعلِ هُناكَ في اللُغَةِ العَرَبِيَّة؟ (kam zamanun lilfiʿli hunāka fī al-luġaẗi al-ʿarabiyyah?) |
| Michael: And do you remember how Sasha's teacher says "There are two. Past and present?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Nora as Nancy Namek:.هُناكَ إثنان. الماضي و المُضارِع (hunāka ʾiṯnān. al-māḍī wa al-muḍāriʿ.) |
| Michael: As you could hear, unlike the English language which has three tenses: past, present, and future, Modern Standard Arabic has only two tenses |
| Nora: المُضارِع (al-muḍāriʿ) |
| Michael: meaning "present" |
| Nora:الماضي (al-māḍī) |
| Michael: meaning "past." In this lesson, you’ll learn how an Arabic verb changes in the present tense and the past tense. You'll also learn how to express the future tense. To demonstrate, we’ll use the verb |
| Nora: ذَهَبَ (ḏahaba) |
| Michael: meaning "to go." You may already be thinking how come there is no future tense, but we will discuss that in a bit. First off, let’s start with the past tense. In Arabic, the past tense is considered to be the dictionary form, or the form that was classically used to look up a word in a dictionary. For the purposes of this lesson, we will discuss first, second, and third person singular masculine forms. In Arabic, the dictionary form is the third person masculine singular form of a verb, so let’s start with that. The third person masculine singular form of "to go" is |
| Nora:ذَهَبَ (ḏahaba) |
| Michael: meaning "he went." This is the simplest form of a verb, which makes it the form learners use as the base form of each verb they learn. If you have this form, you can go ahead and add pre-set affixes to any regular verb in Arabic and achieve other forms—starting with |
| Nora:ذَهَبتَ (ḏahabta) |
| Michael: meaning "you went." Here, we added a |
| Nora: تـَ (ta) |
| Michael: to the end of the dictionary form. Next, we have |
| Nora: ذَهَبتُ (ḏahabtu) |
| Michael: meaning "I went." Here, we added a |
| Nora: تـُ (tu) |
| Michael: to the end of the dictionary form—now for the present tense. First, we have |
| Nora:يَذهَب (yaḏahab) |
| Michael: meaning "he goes." Here, we added a |
| Nora: يـَ (ya) |
| Michael: to the beginning of the dictionary form, to form the masculine singular third person present tense. Next, we have |
| Nora:تَذهَب (taḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning "you go." As you can tell, now we added |
| Nora: تـَ (ta) |
| Michael: to the beginning of the dictionary form. Next, we have |
| Nora:أَذهَب (aḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning "I go." This one is very commonly used when talking about your habits. Here we added |
| Nora: أَ (a) |
| Michael: to the beginning of the dictionary form. In traditional grammar, these are the two tenses of Standard Arabic. However, combining a particle that acts as the modal verb "will" in English with the present tense form creates a future tense sentence in Arabic. The magic particle is |
| Nora: سَوفَ (sawfa) |
| Michael: So, let’s start with |
| Nora:سَوفَ يَذهَب (sawfa yaḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning "he will go." We can also say |
| Nora:سَوفَ تَذهَب (sawfa taḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning "you will go." Lastly, we can say |
| Nora:سَوفَ أَذهَب (sawfa aḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning "I will go." In addition to this particle, there is a suffix that can be added to the beginning of a present tense verb, which is |
| Nora: سـَ (sa) |
| Michael: so instead of |
| Nora:سَوفَ أَذهَب (sawfa aḏhab) |
| Michael: you can also say |
| Nora:سَأَذهَب (sa’aḏhab) |
| Michael: meaning the exact same thing, "I will go." There is no difference in meaning, so it comes down to personal preference. Remember that verbs in Arabic agree with the subject in gender, number, and person inflection, so every time you create a verbal sentence, always be mindful of what or who the subject is. Therefore, the examples presented in this lesson are one of three possible conjugations. Other gender–number–person combinations give different conjugations. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: In this lesson, we learned that in ِArabic there are two main tenses: present and past tense. To create the right tense, we take the verb stem and add a prefix or a suffix, conjugating it to agree with the subject in number, gender, and person. |
| Expansion |
| Michael: Because of the verb conjugations, Arabic can seem a little more difficult than English. Also remember that, in Arabic, personal pronouns are usually omitted. So, "I went to the coffeeshop" will just be two words: |
| Nora: .ذَهَبتُ إلى المَقهى (ḏahabtu ʾilā al-maqhā) |
| Michael: literally "went to the coffeeshop." The subject ‘I’ is built into the conjugation of the verb. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Nora: !سلام (Salam!) |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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