Hello dear Arabic learners! Welcome to a new blog post مرحبًا بكم في مدوّنة جديدة 🙂 Today, we’re going to be learning about a specific grammatical feature, and that is: adverbs الظروف  in Standard Arabic.

This week, we’ll start with the temporal adverb ْظَرْفْ الزَّمَان (in two parts) and the two blog posts after will be dedicated to the other type of adverbs, that is: the spatial adverb ْظَرْفْ المَكَان

So, what’s an adverb? ما هو الظرف؟

An adverb is a word that often qualifies يُحَدِّد a verb فعلًا/ an action حدثًا ما or a noun phrase عبارة اسمية and comments or adds information on يضيف معلومات عن the place المكان, the time الزمان or the manner الطريقة in which an action occurs التي يحدث بها الفعل

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Let’s start with the first type of adverbs >>

 

1. Temporal adverbs:

ظرف الزمان is directly related to the concept of time مفهوم الوقت

It literally translates (from Arabic) into > adverb of time ظرف الزمان

A temporal adverb can be defined as يمكن تعريفه على أنه the container الوعاء in which an action happens الذي يحدث فيه الشيء/الفعل .

In other words, it is a reference to إشارة إلى the time الوقت in which the verb occurs.

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Types of temporal adverbs:

Adverbs of this type can be broadly categorised into 3 main types. They could give:

• A specific reference to time إشارة محدّدة للوقت.
• The duration of the verb مدة حدوث الفعل .
• The extent of the frequency of the verb/action مدى تكرار الفعل/ الحدث

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Let’s now look at each one in more detail:

 

• a specific reference to time

These are adverbs that indicates the specific time الوقت المحدد in which a verb took place.

 

Examples:

in the morning *صباحًا

in the evening مساءً

at night ليلًا

 

*One must bear in mind that if a word, such as صباح occurred in a context where it doesn’t necessarily refer to a specific point of time, it’s not considered a temporal adverb and is dealt with depending on its grammatical role in a sentence, as it is in this example:

هذا الصباح جميل جدًا

 

Examples in sentences:

أستيقظ من النوم مبكرًا

I wake up early

 

أذهب إلى البحر صيفًا

I go to the beach in the summer

 

أقوم للصلاة فجرًا

I wake to pray at dawn

 

Popular adverbs:

in the morning صباحًا 

in the afternoon ظهرًا

in the evening مساءً

in the day نهارًا 

at night ليلًا

early باكرًا/ مبكّرًا 

late متأخرًا

now الآن

recently حديثًا

after بعد 

before قبل

tomorrow غدًا

يومَ غد*

tomorrow أمس

يومَ أمس*

when(ever) متى 

Since X ……. منذُ

 

*(Temporal) Adverbs are often accusative منصوبة as in the examples above, but depending on their position in a sentence, they can also be otherwise, as in this example:

ِرأيت صديقي منذُ يومين

I have seen my friend two days ago (since two days)

 

The temporal adverb here منذ is part of a phrase منذ يومين but what’s considered a temporal adverb is the first word منذ.

منذُ here is an adverb that is mabni مبنى (i.e. the harakah or the diacritic on its ending is fixed, regardless of its role in the sentence) and it always has Dhamma ُ  ضمّة on its ending. Unlike most temporal adverbs, منذُ is a mabni adverb ظرف مبنى and is not moʕrab ًليس مُعرَبًا  as is the case with many other temporal adverbs.

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See you soon, in the 2nd part of this post 🙂