Arabic. Impossible for English-speakers to learn, right? Wrong. Arabic may be different than English, but it's certainly not impossible to learn. In this book I unpack aspects of Arabic, as a learner myself.
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Most languages have a system of gender in their nouns and adjectives. English is an exception, but gender is not hard to learn in Arabic. There are a few nuances, but they are not complicated. The first thing to do, however, is define what the grammatical device of gender is, since it's not in English.
The grammatical concept of gender is that nouns are divided up into "masculine" and "feminine". (Sorry, no third gender.) Even nouns that are gender-neutral (i.e. apple, bike, car) have a gender.
Gender is easier to tell in some languages than others, and it is important when describing a noun. Adjectives must match the noun in gender and number (we'll discuss how to make a noun plural later). So, how does gender work in Arabic?
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Arabic's genders are usually easy to tell. There are 3 characters that can appear on the end of a word that can make a noun feminine. If the word lacks one of these three, it is usually masculine. We'll talk about exceptions to the rule soon, but first let's discuss the basics.
Taa marbutaat (ة)
If you add a ة onto the end of a noun or adjective, it becomes feminine.
جَمَل >> جَمَلة Camel >> female camel
جُمهورية جَمِلة
A beautiful republic (جَمِل is the original adjective)
**NOTE: Cases with ة are a little special. Usually in MSA it is transliterated as "ah". However, when we put a feminine noun in any case, ة is transliterated as "at" instead.
Example 1: جُمهوريةٌ (jumhuuriyyatun - republic, nominative)
Example 2: سيرةً (siiratan - biography, accusative)
Example 3: ماء جَمَلةٍ (maa' jamalatin - the camel's water, genitive)
****NOTE 2: Sometimes words will have a ة spoken at the end despite it not being written down. This is uncommon, but it does happen, and it's called an "assumed ة".
Example: نِءُر (ni'urah - well)
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Another way to make a noun feminine is to add ئ or اء. The ى in Arabic is another way to write ا, so these symbols mean the same thing.
Example: ماء (maa' - water)
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⚠️ Exceptions ⚠️
There are some words that have no written indicative of being feminine, but it is assumed that they are. If you speak a language that has a gender system, you'll know that the exceptions can be a bit confusing to grasp at first! But over time, you'll learn what the exceptions are and how to work with them.
Example: شَمس (shams - sun) is a feminine noun despite not having any of the "markers" of being feminine.
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Types of Femininity:
In Arabic, there are two types of femininity. This does not affect the rules listed above, but it's one of those rules that still has to be mentioned anyway.
