Verbs-Present Tense(A)

V E R B S 

In Arabic verbs take their infinitive form by using the past form of that verb and conjugate it to the third person singular “he”, to make it simple here is an example: to draw = rasama = رسم (he drew), to write = kataba (he wrote) = كتب. daraba ضرب  (to hit)…

Most verbs in Arabic have a three letters root or stem, there are also verbs containing more than three letters in their root (stem) but we will start with verbs shaving a three consonant stem, also called trilateral verbs, since the trilateral verbs (containing three consonant) are the most common.

In Arabic we use a “masdar” “source” to show how a verb is conjugated and what forms it takes, normally for a three letters verb we use:

fa’ala = فعل = to do (literally in  Arabic it means “he did”), this verb is used as an example or model to help us know how to conjugate other verbs having the same characteristics.

We take for instance the verb: to draw = rasama = رسم as you can see it in Arabic it has only three consonant (R ر , S س, M م), this verb sounds exactly like our model verbs (fa’ala   فعل) when it comes to its vowels, and that’s all we care about, ignore the similarity or difference in the consonants, what matters is the similarity in the vowels and the number of letters, because you will replace the consonant in our examples and put your own there,  to make it more simple we will take a random word phonetically similar to our verb “fa’ala” “ lalala” sounds like “rasama” if you compare its vowels and the number of consonants, other examples are: dahaba ذهب  (to go), haraba  هرب(to run away), kataba  كتب(to write), nasaha  نصح(to advise), daraba ضرب  (to hit), in fact most Arabic verbs are formed this way. They all seem to have the same tune.

Now to form the present tense with this kind of verbs, we first take our stem from the verb, in other words, extract all vowels from the verb, for example the verb to draw = rasama, once we extract all vowels we will end up having “rsm” , now this stem is ready to be modeled. Look at the table below:

Arabic Present Tense:

To form the present tense in Arabic you need to extract the stem from the verb in the infinitive first, for example:

To draw = rasama  رسم  Stem is rsm, now let’s look at the table below to see how this verb is conjugated in this tense:

Present Tense in Arabic
Singular	Dual	Plural
I  draw = arsumu you draw (singular masculine)  = tarsumu you draw (singular feminine)  = tarsumeena he draws  = yarsumu she draws = tarsumu	you draw (dual male or female) = tarsumani they draw (dual male or female) = yarsumani	we draw = narsumu you draw (plural masculine) = tarsumuna your draw (plural feminine) = tarsumna they draw (plural masculine) = yarsumuna they draw (plural feminine) = yarsumna

Each form of the verb rasama above contains:

Blue font (that’s what you need to keep, the blue font shouldn’t be modified or removed from verb, it stays the same)

Red font (that’s what you need to delete and add your own consonant of the verb you chose to conjugate: kataba  ktb, haraba  hrb…)

Green font (you can keep that one too, but not all the time, sometimes it becomes “a” or “i” instead of “u” depending on the verb)

You may have noticed that the “rs” of the stem “rsm” are always together, that’s the case with all trilateral verbs (verbs with three consonants, which are the most frequently used verbs in Arabic) the first and second consonant go together, so you can use this table with other verbs as well by replacing the letters in red (the stem we used before) and put your own verb stem instead.

The vowel in green may change to “a” or “i” depending on the verb, like for example for the verb nasaha (to advise) instead of using the “u” in green we have to change it to “a” I advise = ansahu, you advise = tansahu…(and not ansuhu .. tansuhu) and so on… (Note that the stem here is “n.s.h” as we mentioned earlier), for the verb daraba (to hit) we use “i” instead, I hit = adribu, he hits = yadribu. (and not adrubu)…

In case you think that this is too complicated, I will tell you that it’s not something unusual, and if you’re a native or learned Spanish, French, German or even English before, you will notice that the vowels in the middle of some verbs sometimes don’t really follow the rule, Examples:

Spanish: yo hablo = I speak, if you follow this rule you would use yo dormo for the verb dormir, but instead Spanish is using yo duermo = I sleep

French: the verb “appeler” if you respect the French rules you may write: je m’appele = my name, but instead the correct form is “je m’appelle” with “ll”

German: the verb “sehen” to see, by following the general German rule we should write: he sees = er seht, but instead the correct form is er sieht.

English: simply take the verb “to go” I go, you go, he gos? Of course not, the right form is he goes as you know. All these examples are not considered irregularities but semi irregularities, which means that they’re modified only for phonetic and synthetic reasons).

 If you don’t know how to extract the stem from a verb (even though it’s very easy) we will go through it now: by omitting all vowels from these verbs we will have: dhb = dahaba ذهب  (to go), hrb = haraba  هرب(to run away), ktb = kataba  كتب(to write), nsh = nasaha  نصح(to advise), drb = daraba ضرب  (to hit). Easy!

 Note that the second person singular masculine “you” is conjugated the same way the third person singular feminine “she” does. Tarsumu = you draw (singular masculine) and also means she draws.