Learn about grammatical gender in the Arabic language
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Intro |
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| Michael: How can a word be masculine or feminine? |
| Nora: And how do you determine a noun's gender in Arabic? |
| Michael: At ArabicPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Karen is talking to her friend about what she'd like to buy for the summer season. She says, |
| "I want to buy a fan and an air conditioner." |
| .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Dialogue |
| Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Randa Rizk: .الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Michael: "I want to buy a fan and an air conditioner." |
| Randa Rizk:الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً. (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
| Michael: "The weather is indeed really hot these days." |
Lesson focus |
| Michael: Arabic is one of many languages in the world that have grammatical gender. In Arabic, nouns like "tree" or "sun," as well as abstract nouns like "honesty" and "generosity" have to be one of two types: masculine or feminine. |
| Nora: مُذَكَّر (muḏakkar) |
| Michael: meaning "masculine," and |
| Nora: مُؤَنَّث (muʾannaṯ) |
| Michael: meaning "feminine." That means that any noun in Arabic can never be neuter, or genderless. That adds a degree of complexity to learning nouns in Arabic because one has to memorize the gender of the word along with the meaning and sound of it. |
| Nora: المَعنى (al-maʿnā) |
| Michael: meaning "meaning," and |
| Nora: النُطق (al-nuṭq) |
| Michael: meaning "pronunciation." Another important thing to consider is that adjectives that describe these nouns, as well as verbs that specify the actions carried out by these nouns, follow these nouns with respect to gender among other things. For verbs, deciding which noun the action is carried out by, and knowing the feminine and masculine forms of the verb is key to forming a correct sentence. For adjectives, deciding which noun the adjective is describing is paramount. However, it’s not all bad news. There are tell-tale signs that a noun is feminine or masculine. Generally speaking, nouns ending with the letter |
| Nora: ة (ta’ marbuta) |
| Michael: pronounced as an "h" sound or a "t" sound depending on the conjugation have a very high probability of being feminine nouns. That’s not to say that any word that doesn’t end in this letter is not a feminine noun. Some are, like the word |
| Nora: شَمس (šams) |
| Michael: meaning "sun," which is a feminine noun that doesn’t end in this letter. These are rare cases but must be taken into consideration when learning new nouns. Another ending that marks a noun as a feminine noun is: |
| Nora: اء (āʾ) |
| Michael: like the word |
| Nora: صَحراء (ṣaḥrāʾ) |
| Michael: meaning "desert." But be careful that some male names have this ending, but, again, these are rare instances that should be memorized as-is. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: Let’s take a closer look at the dialogue. |
| Do you remember how Karen says "I want to buy a fan and an air conditioner?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Nora as Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Michael: In this sentence, we have two nouns. |
| Nora: مِروَحَةً (mirwaḥaẗan ) |
| Michael: which is a feminine noun meaning "fan," and |
| Nora: مُكَيِّفاً (mukayyifan) |
| Michael: which is a masculine noun meaning "airconditioner." As you can see, the grammar gender also applies to non-living entities. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: Now, let’s take a look at our second sentence. |
| Do you remember how Karen’s friend says "The weather is indeed really hot these days?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Nora as Randa Rizk: .الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
| Michael: In this sentence, we have a masculine noun |
| Nora: الجَوُّ (al-ǧawwu) |
| Michael: meaning "the weather," and an adjective that agrees with it in gender, which is |
| Nora: حارٌّ (ḥārrun) |
| Michael: meaning "hot" in masculine form. If it had been a feminine noun, you would have to change the form of this adjective into |
| Nora: حارَّةٌ (ḥāratun) |
| Michael: which is the feminine form of the adjective "hot." |
| Review |
| Michael: Let's practice: respond to the prompts by speaking aloud, then repeat after the native speaker, focusing on pronunciation. |
| Do you remember how to say "I want to buy a fan and an air conditioner?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Nora as Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Nora as Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Nora as Karen Lee: .أُريدُ أَن أَشتَري مِروَحَةً و مُكَيِّفاً (ʾurīdu ʾan ʾaštarī mirwaḥaẗan wa mukayyifan.) |
| Michael: And do you remember how to say "The weather is indeed really hot these days?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Nora as Randa Rizk: .الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Nora as Randa Rizk: .الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Nora as Randa Rizk: .الجَوُّ حارٌّ جِدّاً هَذِهِ الأَيَّامِ حَقّاً (al-ǧawwu ḥārrun ǧiddan haḏihi al-ʾayyāmi ḥaqqan.) |
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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