Subject pronouns (ضمائر الفاعل) in Arabic are used to substitute nouns and to refer to them, e.g. (الطالب متغيب، هو مريض) “the student is absent; he is ill”. Personal pronouns in Arabic have a lot in common with English pronouns, but have some differences as well. For example, Arabic does not have a pronoun for “it” like English, since all words are marked for gender, we use either he or she to refer to them, e.g.(قمر)   “moon” is masculine and we use (هو) to refer to it, while ( (شمس “sun” is feminine and we use (هي) to refer to it. Another difference is related to the dual case, since Arabic recognizes dual as a separate number category, there are dual pronouns to reflect this, namely: (هما) they dual and (أنتما) you dual.

Possessive pronouns (ضمائر الملكية) in Arabic do not appear as separate words, instead they are marked as suffixes at the end of nouns, e.g. (كتابي) “my book” and (كتابه) “his book”. The last letter of the word, i.e. the suffix is the possessive pronouns. Dual should be observed when using possessive pronouns as well.

Object pronouns (ضمائر المفعول) appear as suffixes at the end of verbs. They refer to the object (affected party) of the verb, e.g. (ساعدني) “he helped me” (قابلتهم) “I met them”. There is a great deal of overlap between the forms of possessive and object pronouns, i.e. the same suffixes are used for most pronouns except my and me who appear differently. Please look at the table for more details.

In the following sentences pronounsare highlighted.

أنت صديقي وأنا اساعدك.

“You are my friend and I help you”

أختي تساعد زميلاتها في واجباتهن وهن يساعدنها في مشروعها.

“My sister helps her colleagues with their homework, and they help her with her project.