The Past Tense in Arabic:
To form the past tense in Arabic you need to
extract the stem from the verb in the infinitive first, for example:
To write = kataba stem is ktb, now let’s look at the table below to see how this
verb is conjugated in this tense:
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Past Tense in Arabic
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Singular
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Dual
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Plural
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I wrote = katabtu
you wrote (singular
masculine) = katabta
you wrote (singular
feminine) = katabti
he wrote = kataba
she wrote = katabat
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you wrote (dual male or
female) = katabtumaa
they wrote (dual male
or female) = katabaa
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we wrote = katabna
you wrote (plural
masculine) = katabtum
your wrote (plural
feminine) = katabtunna
they wrote (plural
masculine) = katabou
they wrote (plural
feminine) = katabna
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This is very easy and simple! You can put
almost all trilateral Arabic verbs in this table. First take the verb you want
to conjugate, extract all its 3 consonants, put them in place of the 3 red
consonant on the table above. As you may have noticed, look at how the three
consonants are spread in the word katabtu, consonant+ vowel+ consonant+ vowel+ consonant…
I will make the same note I made before in the
present tense, you will have to change the vowel in the green font into “i”,
the only difference this time is that you won’t have to do it that often as the
case with the present tense, because the “a” is more used. Do you remember the
two verbs (to advise = nasaha, and to hit = daraba) that we conjugated differently
in the present tense, in the past tense they can be conjugated the same way as
rasama & kataba , like I said before many verbs will follow the general
rules of the table above when it comes to the past tense unlike the present
tense.
To conjugate your own trilateral verb into the past tense go to the table and have your verb
stem ready (don’t tell me you forgot how to make a stem from a trilateral verb)
It should contain three consonant and no
vowels, if you want to conjugate it in the paste tense then replace the first
consonant on the table above in red “k” with the
first consonant of the stem you have of your own verb, then replace “t” with the second consonant you have, finally replace
“b” with the last consonant you have, and that’s
it!
Example: I wrote = katabtu , if you want to
use “I went” (1 step is to find the verb to go in the Arabic infinitive: the
verb is dahaba = to go, 2: the stem is dhb,
3: omit the (k, t, b) stem in the table above
and put yours, you will easily get dahabtu!!)
Note: in case you’re confused whether to
replace the “a” in the green font with “i” or not, I
would just tell you that if you’re a beginner just leave the “a”, because “a”
is the most common, but I would also suggest to read more about the forms that
most of verbs take so that you will easily decide whether to put “a” or “i” when
conjugating verbs into the past tense in Arabic.
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