Nouns Sg.-Pl.,*9 Arabic Book Beginners

Singular to Plural in Arabic:

In Arabic to form the plural we use two methods: add a suffix or change the body of the word (to form an irregular plural).

A suffix (aatات  ) is added to form a plural usually when a word ends with a “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, but before adding the suffix we first have to omit the existing ((ة, ــة :

For example:

Shajara شجرة (a tree)  Shajaraat شجرات (trees). So the body here is shajar شجر to form the feminine we add to it “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, to form the plural we add the suffix “aat ات ” as you can see in the example above.

We can also add the suffix (aatات  ) even to words not ending with “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, for example:

Qitar قطار (train)  Qitaraat قطارات  (trains)

Mashroob مشروب (drink)  Mashroobaat  مشروبات(drinks)

Another suffix (een ين ) is added to form the plural of some words (especially nationalities, religions, professions…)

Amreki أمريكي (American)  amrekieen  أمريكيين(Americans)

Moslem مسلم (Moslem)  Moslemeen مسلمين  (Moslems)

Motarjem مترجم (translator)  Motarjemeen مترجمين (translators)

Now we will move to the irregular forms, you will notice that there are many of them, so it’s advised to learn words with their plurals, and most dictionaries write the definition of words with their plural form, and it’s not that hard as it seems, with practice all ambiguities will be clear.

The table below shows most of forms that a plural can take in Arabic, the words with question marks are our model words, and to convert a word the irregular way you first need to: remove the question mark and add a consonant for each question mark, for example the word “book” means ketaab كتاب in Arabic, to form the plural I wrote in the table below how to form it by showing you the form with question marks (?u?u?), meaning ketaab  ?u?u?  kutub. If you remove the consonant of the word ketaab respectively and put them in our model word, you will have kutub, which is obviously the plural of ketaab (book), same thing with other examples below:

 There are some other forms of forming the plural in Arabic, but they are very rare, so you don’t have to worry about them right now.