On this course … the idea is to cover the material together and give time for all people to digest the concepts, however, we will move quite quickly so please keep up.
Each lesson will be given 4 days for thought. Please read the rules carefully the plan is below:
This thread will be used only for lesson 1 material and discussion. Any questions you may have please PM brother LLK and he will capture responses and update the FAQ accordingly inshaAllah.
Please DO ask questions it show us that you are doing the work and it shows where you and others could need more explanation. The worst thing is to skim through the book and you feel no wiser at the end of the course.
Alongside the course other material will be given either by audio or video or both, so don’t miss that … and some assistance on makhrij/tajweed ((مخرج/تجويد)) will also be given.
As brother LKK said in the “Arabic Course Discussion Thread [For Students]” - please review the Arabic terms on pdf pages 17 and 18 - but on the print of the book these pages appear as xiii and xiv.
You are not supposed to know what the terms mean yet as the course will elaborate on each term, inshaAllah.
Lesson 1 supporting notes will appear soon … below … please avoid responding in this thread for the sake of keeping taught material separate from non-taught material. Lesson 1 shall cover until page 21 on the pdf which is page 3 on the print.
The beginning of Chapter 1, Section 1.1 begins by introducing the term Nahw ((النحوُ))… And it provides a definition, but to be honest this definition can be improved a bit.
The first Arabic word written there in Latinised form is “Al-Nahw” ((النحوُ)) - pronounced “An-nahw” ((النحوُ)) - i.e. the L becomes silent. There is a reason for that and it will be covered in Pronunciation audio/video’s later on inshaAllah. (Related topic: Haroof Al-Shamsiyya Wa Al-Qamariyya) ((الحروف الشمسية والقمرية))
Section 1.1. states two main ideas in the given definition of nahw …
Nahw ((النحوُ)) is about joining nouns ((إسم)), verbs ((Singular verb - فعل)) and particles ((Singular particle - حرف)) to make sentences ((جملة))
Nahw ((النحوُ)) is about i’raab (second Arabic word ) ((إعراب)) … the condition of the last letter
Actually this is not entirely correct …
There are several Arabic sciences and the one that deals with letters within a word is sarf ((صرف))… and the one that deals with giving the correct meaning is nahw ((النحوُ)) and the combined area of sarf ((صرف)) and nahw ((النحوُ)) gives something that we can work with - known as grammar ((قواعد)).
Nahw ((النحوُ)) is the science of correct sentence construction … If you go to the table of Arabic Terms it rightly states that the i’raab ((إعراب)) is about how the end of word inflect based on a governing word that does that to them.
i’raab ((إعراب)) literally means clothes and you can imagine Arabic nahw ((النحوُ)) being the science of how Arabic words change their clothes based on which situation they are in … just like we change our clothes when going to bed, to school, to a party or work in the garden … in a similar way Arabic words do the same. In fact the word Arabi … comes from the name given to its language … (or vice versa) that it is the language that wears clothes …
The word kalaam ((كلام)) actually means “speech” not sentence as given in the book. The word for sentence in Arabic is Jumla ((جملة)) … it is understood that Kalaam ((كلام)) has constituent parts or units … and the name of a unit part is known as kalimah ((كلمه))… part of speech.
Words are parts of speech but there are other parts of speech that are not words, they can be sounds and gestures. The word for “word” in Arabic … is lafdz ((لفظ)). (Don’t worry we will cover pronunciation later on inshaAllah !!!)
From classical texts we learn that for the purpose of Nahw ((النحوُ)) - The science of meaningful sentence ((جملة)) construction …
Al-Kalaam ((كلام)) means "the beneficial (meaningful) word construction put forth (delivered) and from within this domain … there are three classes of ‘word’.
The Ism ((إسم))- Name - Noun
The Fi’l ((فعل))- Action that is taken - Verb
The Harf ((حرف))- Bit - Particle or Preposition
Word order in a sentence alone does not provide the fuller meaning in Arabic … although word order is important too … but there are several qualities that each word class has that helps the reader know what meaning is actually being given.
Going on to Section 1.2 - it may be a bit confusing to read that there are words without meanings … but there are in many written forms especially in languages that are written to represent sounds like the phonetic languages which includes Arabic … examples of written forms that did not have symbols that represent sounds are hieroglyphs and Chinese (not strictly true) … but in theory you can put a string a letters together using the Arabic letters to make a sound, but it may have no meaning at all. That is what is meant here … usually sounds and gestures that may help the sentence carry meaning, but individually do not carry any meaning …
So we have two branches of words (ilfaadz)((ألفاظ)) … Mawdoo ((موضوع)) and Muhmal ((مهمل)) … The Muhmal variety are completely not discussed when it comes to Nahw ((النحوُ)). So you should understand that nahw ((النحوُ)) is specifically about meaning and the words that carry some meaningful role in the sentence.
Caution: Section 1.2 is equating kalimah ((كلمه)) with mufrad ((مفرد/واحد))… these are not the same really.
kalimah ((كلمه)) translates to a (single) ((مفرد)) unit of speech or phrase and kalaam ((كلام)) is speech
However, mufrad ((مفرد)) simply means singular ((واحد))… and there could be some confusion later on when we talk about numbers. So it is better to avoid calling that mufrad ((مفرد)) also.
What Section 1.2 is getting at here is that it is distinguishing between written forms … some words in Arabic translate to one word in other languages, but there are other word constructs that appear as one word in Arabic but are many words when translated.
So you have a “compounded word complex - مركب معقد كلمة” ( Muraqqab )((مركب)) and you have the “standalone word” - ( kalimah )((كلمه)).
And then the kalimah ((كلمه)) is being subdivided for the next part.
We can learn to recognise which class any given word in Arabic belongs to based on a few rules that we have to become familiar with and these rules are based on appearance of the word in itself and appearance in its position with respect to other words.
I would like to explain further about the ism ((إسم)) …
In English we have some to denote whether a given thing is either indefinite ((مجهول)) or definite ((معروف)) … For simplicity we shall say that indefinite means unknown ((مجهول)) and definite means known ((معروف)) … But we will further elaborate on this when the time right. “A book ((كتاب))” is unknown ((مجهول)) … But when we say “the book ((الكتاب))” … It becomes known ((معروف)) to us … so in the course where it gives the example of nouns ((إسم)) it states house as the translation to Al-baytu ((البيت))… Technically the translation should have been The House …
The book covers it in basic for the time being and we will accept that … So no al ((ال)) will be allowed to fix itself to the word ((لفظ)) nor will the word ((لفظ)) have an i’raab ((إعراب)) of tanween ((تنوين))… Hence it is likely to be a verb ((فعل)) … But be careful … There will be further things to learn later about recognising verbs ((فعل)) and nouns ((إسم)), inshaAllah.
note: one of the questions in this lesson requires you to search for plurals (()) in a dictionary … You can also use google translate by putting in the English plural form to get the answer in Arabic … What this exercise is doing is that it will lead you on to recognising the patterns of some words when they are in plural form. So study the forms very closely.
This concludes the supporting notes … I will try to post some supporting video/audio too inshaAllah.
The word “Tanween - ((تنوين))” in Arabic comes from the name of the letter “Noon - ((refer video))” … Ba ((refer video)) with damma on it makes Bu ((refer video)), Ba ((refer video)) with a FatHa on it makes Ba (()) and Ba ((refer video)) with a kasra under it makes Bi ((refer video)) …
When we double each of these we get a double damma on the Ba which is no longer Bu, but Bun and the double fatHa - instead of Ba it is Ban … and instead of Bi the double kasra is Bin …
As you can see the tanween is all about adding a nun sound to the end of the letter with the corresponding haraka.
Tanween literally means “with nun on it” i.e. Tanween is from the same root as Nun …
Further discussions will unveil how some words are constructed and recited in the Qur’an resulting from this type of formation inshaAllah.
sorry I’m late and trying to catchup here , but feel the need to point out if there can be more visuals, similar to the youtube link in above post? Written in arabic fonts is difficult to perceive and follow thru. Just two cents..