Many, few, clear: the word that describes a noun

This lesson teaches the adjective: the word that says what a noun is like. In Arabic it stands after its noun and takes after it. With it come eight of the commonest words of the Qur’ān that describe.

The new words

Five of them, ʿaẓīm, ʿalīm, ʿazīz, ḥakīm and ghafūr, carry the religion in the Qur’ān's use of them: the course gives no meaning of its own for any of them, and you read them in the verses, with the edition's meaning beside them. You can still learn how they are built, and what they do in a sentence.

After its noun, and like it

An adjective comes after its noun and matches it in four things: its case, its number, its gender, and whether it has al-. There is one exception you will meet: a plural of things that are not people most often takes its adjective in the feminine singular.

In ʿani n-nabaʾi l-ʿaẓīm, the noun is nabaʾ and the word that describes it is ʿaẓīm. Both have al-, and the corpus marks both masculine, singular and genitive: ʿan from lesson 3 puts the noun in the genitive, and the adjective follows it there.

Here neither has al-: yawmin ʿaẓīmin, and the corpus marks both genitive.

ʿAynun jāriyatun: the corpus marks ʿayn feminine, with no sign of it in the word, as with arḍ in lesson 9. Its adjective shows the feminine with -ah, and both are nominative with no al-.

Described, or said of it

After a noun with al-, a word of this kind can do two different things, and al- tells them apart.

This sentence was written for practice. Al-kabīru has al- like al-baytu, so it describes it: "the big house". Qarībun has none, so it is what is said of the house: "is near". Arabic needs no word for "is" here, as in the sentences of lesson 13.

One pattern

Kathīr, qalīl, ʿaẓīm, ʿalīm, ʿazīz and ḥakīm are built alike: the three letters of the root with a after the first and ī after the second. Ghafūr is built the same way with ū in place of ī. A root you know helps you recognise a word: ʿalīm has the root ʿ-l-m, as ʿalima from lesson 6 has. Its meaning is still read in the verses.

Qalīlan has the accusative ending. The corpus marks it as an adjective here, though the word before it is a verb and not a noun.

Wa-kathīrun is wa and kathīrun. Here the corpus marks it as a noun: such a word can stand on its own, with no noun to describe.

The last word is al-mubīn, with al- like the noun before it, and in the genitive like it. The corpus marks mubīn as the active participle of a verb of form IV, a kind of word lesson 20 met and the next lesson teaches further.

Reading

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Recall

• In which four things does an adjective match its noun?
• How is "the big house" told apart from "the house is big"?
• Which vowels does the pattern of qalīl have?

Answers: case, number, gender, and whether it has al-; the adjective has al-, and what is said of the house has none; a, then ī.

Next

The next lesson teaches the noun for the one who does a thing, and the masculine plural on it.