Just as diacritics play a significant role in disambiguating the meaning of graphically similar words, long vowels determine the form of derived words; therefore, they are called حُرُوف العِلَّة ‘the weak letters.’

illustration by Ibnulyemen

The fact that Arabic is a phonetic language is facilitative of learning. Its words are pronounced the way they are written—no silent letters and no combination of letters for a single sound. So, being able to articulate letters and diacritics means you are in a position to correctly pronounce any Arabic word even if you are encountering it for the first time. For this reason, I focused on تَشْكِيل, تَنْوِين, اللَّام الشَّمْسِية والقَمَرِيَّة, أَلِفُ الوَصْل, التَّاء المَرْبُوطَة, and dissimilar sounds from your native language in the previous few posts. While irregularities in the pronunciation of Arabic words are scarce, they are common in word-formation. These irregularities are caused by long vowels or حُرُوْف العِلَّة, i.e. و, ا, and ي.

حُرُوْفُ العِلَّة are called weak letters because they don’t retain their original form when new words are derived from roots. Given that learning the structure of words is exceedingly important in augmenting your vocabulary, fluency, and accuracy, it is essential that you be heedful of حُرُوف العِلَّة  every time you jot down/learn new Arabic words. As to word types, Arabic words are classified into three main categories: verbs, nouns, and prepositions. Ignoring the latter for now, verbs and nouns constitute the bulk of Arabic dictionary. Structurally, حُرُوْفُ العِلَّة can be part of root verbs/nouns and this is where we should take heed.

Let’s start with verbs.

In a tri-consonantal verb, حَرْفُ العِلَّة can occur at the beginning, middle, or end of the verb, see the illustration above. Such a verb is called in Arabic grammar مُعْتَل, as opposed to صَحِيْح, i.e. devoid of حُرُوْف العِلَّة. For now, you can think of مُعْتَل as irregular and صَحِيْح as regular. Here are more examples of مُعْتَل:

So, what exactly happens to these long vowels when these verbs are conjugated or transformed into nouns?

Basically, one of two things can happen to these letters. They can be deleted or changed to another letter. To illustrate, let’s conjugate the verbs وَقَفَ, قَالَ, and دَعَا in the present form:

• مَحَمَّد يَقِفُ وَسَط الغُرْفَة ‘Mohammed stops in the middle of the room.’
• مُحَمَّد يَقُولُ إِنَّهُ مَرِيض ‘Mohammed says that he is sick.’
• مَحَمَّد يَدْعُو أَصْدِقائِه إِلَى بَيْتِه مَرَّة فِي الشَّهْر ‘Mohammed invites his friends over once a month.’

You can see that in the first sentence the long vowel is completed dropped. In the second, it changes from ا to و. In the last, it changes from ا to و as well.

Now, shall we try another type of conjugation—imperative. As you probably know, the imperative form is derived from the present form by simply dropping the prefix of the present form, i.e. the يـ in يَقِفُ, يَقُوْل, and يَدْعُو. Besides, the long vowel is to be dropped as entailed by the grammar. Hence, the imperative form of these verbs are:

قِفْ ‘stop!’        قُلْ ‘say!’           اِدْعْ ‘call!’ or ‘invite!’

To underscore the importance of حُرُوْفُ العِلَّة further, here is yet another type of derivation in which they behave weirdly—the derivation of ‘subject nouns’, as in English play–player derivation. As you may know, subject nouns in Arabic are derived from tri-consonantal verbs by simply adding ا alif after the first letter. Using the same verbs, وَقَفَ, قَالَ, and دَعَا, here is how the derivation looks like:

• وَقَفَ becomes وَاقِف
• قَالَ becomes قَائِل
• دَعَا become دَاع

While no change happens to the long vowel in the case of وَقَفَ, it becomes hamzah ئـ in the case of قَالَ  and is completely dropped in the case of دَعَا. While this is not a comprehensive explanation of the irregularities of long vowels in Arabic verb conjugation/derivation, the point is to make you aware of their importance. Thus, the take-home learning tip from this is that whenever your jot down and learn a new word that has a long vowel in it, it worth pondering the derivative forms from it. Intensive practice of this leads to better intuition and more accurate judgement.

Irregularities similar to the aforesaid emerge with nouns as well. Let’s look at some of them.

In forming dual and plural as well in assigning the correct final diacritical mark (i.e. case) or إِعْرَاب, long vowels undergo a change of some sort. While forming dual or plural, حُرُوْف العِلَّة may be deleted or change to another letter, as in these example:

In case of عَصَا, the ا changes to و in both dual and plural. Similarly, the hamzah in خَضْرَاء which is consider ا alif changes to و before the dual and plural suffixes are added. In the case of قَاضِي, the ي is completely omitted in both singular and plural for reasons that pertain to parsing إِعْرَاب.

Note that the above explanations are concise and mainly meant to draw your attention to the importance of حُرُوْفُ العِلَّة and to give you basic rules about their role in Arabic word-formation as you continue to augment your Arabic lexicon. More fine-grained explanations will be given in future posts.