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Marking the Nominative Case in Arabic Posted by on May 12, 2009 in Grammar

As was mentioned before, the nominative case is the case of nouns used as subject and predicate of the nominal sentence as well as subject of verbal sentences, and their modifying adjectives. There are various endings used to mark the nominative case; depending on the number, gender and definiteness of the noun or adjective in question.

Definite singular (and broken plural) nouns and adjectives are marked by (ضمة) which is written as (ـُ), and sounds like a short /o/

الطالبُ يدرس في الجامعة.

The student studies at university.”

كتب الولدُ الواجب.

The boy wrote the homework.”

Indefinite singular (and broken plural) nouns and adjectives are marked by (تنوين الضم) which is written as (ـٌ) and has the sound /un/

هو طالبٌ جديدٌ.

“He is a new student.”

جاءت بنتٌ إلى الحفل.

A girl came to the party.”

Dual nouns and adjectives are marked by the suffix (ان)

هما طالبان جديدان.

“They are new students (2 male students).”

جاءت بنتان إلى الحفل.

Two girls came to the party.”

Sound masculine pluralnouns and adjectives are marked by the suffix (ون)

هم مهندسون سعوديون.

“They are Saudi engineers.”

جاء المدرسون اللبنانيون.

The Lebanese teachers came.”

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Comments:

  1. othmaan:

    ‘huma talibani jadeedani’=they are two new students(male).

  2. Vernes:

    The blog is great. Is it possible to give some explanations about numbers in Arabic, specially ordinal numbers.
    Thank you!

  3. Aziza:

    Thank you very much for your comment Othmaan. I have added a note between brackets to clarify number and gender.

  4. Aziza:

    Thank you very much for your comment Vernes. I will post information about numbers soon.

  5. David:

    As i see it, building vocabulary is the hardest part of language-learning, which makes “Arabic word of the Day” so useful.
    BUT it would be even more helpful if the vowels were included in the examples.
    Thank you