Arabic Language Blog

This post deals with conjugation of verbs that have a medial vowel (ا). They are called hollow verbs (الفعل الأجوف), e.g. (نام) ‘slept’, (باع) ‘sold’, (قام) ‘got up’, etc. In the present tense, the medial vowel can change, as it becomes like its root. The three examples below give examples of three verbs that behave differently in the present. It should be noted that the medial vowel has to be deleted when the verb is conjugated with the pronouns (هنّ) and (أنتنّ). The deleted long vowel is replaced by a short vowel.

This post deals with conjugation of verbs that begin with the vowel (و) – (الفعل المثال الواوي), e.g. (وصل) ‘arrived, (وعد) ‘promised, etc. In the present tense, which usually involves the use of prefixes, the first vowel of the verb is substituted by the prefix, i.e. the vowel which occurs in the beginning of the verb is deleted and the prefix only appears. Please note that this applies only to verbs that begin with (و); verbs that begin with (ي) are different.

Irregular verbs

This post deals with verbs that begin with a vowel (الفعل المثال), e.g. (وصل) ‘arrived, (وعد) ‘promised, (يئس) ‘gave up hope’, etc. In the past tense, they take the same endings like any other verb, this is mainly because past tense verbs are conjugated with suffixes, or endings. Therefore, the beginning of the verbs, i.e. the vowel remains unaffected

In the present tense, verbs that begin with vowels are conjugated differently from other verbs; you can learn more about them from the following post.