Foundation  /  Al-Ājurrūmiyya  /  Lesson 3

Why the ends of words move

Materials

• Follow along with this lesson The handout — the text, the parsing, and the notes on one sheet PDF
• The whole book — English Our own translation PDF

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الإِعْرَابُ: هُوَ تَغْيِيرُ أَوَاخِرِ الكَلِمِ لاِخْتِلاَفِ العَوَامِلِ الدَّاخِلَةِ عَلَيْهَا لَفْظًا أَوْ تَقْدِيرًا. وَأَقْسَامُهُ أَرْبَعَةٌ: رَفْعٌ، وَنَصْبٌ، وَخَفْضٌ، وَجَزْمٌ. فَلِلأَسْمَاءِ مِنْ ذَلِكَ: الرَّفْعُ، وَالنَّصْبُ، وَالخَفْضُ، وَلاَ جَزْمَ فِيهَا. وَلِلأَفْعَالِ مِنْ ذَلِكَ: الرَّفْعُ، وَالنَّصْبُ، وَالجَزْمُ، وَلاَ خَفْضَ فِيهَا.

Al-iʿrābu huwa taghyīru awākhiri l-kalimi li-khtilāfi l-ʿawāmili d-dākhilati ʿalayhā lafẓan aw taqdīran. Wa-aqsāmuhu arbaʿatun: rafʿun, wa-naṣbun, wa-khafḍun, wa-jazmun. Fa-li-l-asmāʾi min dhālika: ar-rafʿu, wa-n-naṣbu, wa-l-khafḍu, wa-lā jazma fīhā. Wa-li-l-afʿāli min dhālika: ar-rafʿu, wa-n-naṣbu, wa-l-jazmu, wa-lā khafḍa fīhā.

Iʿrāb is the changing of the ends of words because of the different governing agents that come upon them — whether in pronunciation or in estimation.

Its divisions are four: rafʿ, naṣb, khafḍ and jazm.

Of these, nouns take rafʿ, naṣb and khafḍ, and there is no jazm in them.

And verbs take rafʿ, naṣb and jazm, and there is no khafḍ in them.

Translation by Alyph Academy. We translate rather than reprint: the classical Arabic is public domain, published English translations are not.

Reading notes

• This is the payoff of the first two lessons. You learned to say whether a word is a noun, a verb or a particle. Now you learn that the end of the word moves, that it moves for a reason, and that the reason is always something else in the sentence acting on it. Nothing in Arabic grammar after this chapter is about anything else.
• The cause is always external. Li-khtilāfi l-ʿawāmili d-dākhilati ʿalayhā — because of the different governors entering upon the word. A word does not change its own ending. Something arrives and does it to the word. In lesson 1 you saw the bāʾ put al-niyyāt into khafḍ; the bāʾ is an ʿāmil, and that is the whole mechanism.
• Two of the four are diagnostics, and you have already met one. Khafḍ happens only to nouns. Jazm happens only to verbs. So if you see khafḍ you are looking at a noun before you know what it means — which is exactly why khafḍ was listed in lesson 1 among the signs of the noun. The chapter you are reading now is where that sign came from.
• Lafẓan aw taqdīran — pronounced, or estimated. This is the line beginners skip and then trip over for a year. Some words cannot show their ending: Mūsā, al-fatā, anything ending in a fixed alif. They are still in rafʿ or naṣb or khafḍ; the vowel is simply not pronounceable there, so it is estimated — it is present grammatically and absent audibly. A word with no visible ending is not a word with no case.
• Particles have no iʿrāb at all. Notice what the matn does not say. It gives the shares of nouns and the shares of verbs, and stops. The ḥarf is not in the distribution because its end never moves — it is mabnī, fixed. Three kinds of word in lesson 1, and only two of them are in this chapter.
• Do not translate these four as English cases yet. Rafʿ is not quite “nominative” and khafḍ is not quite “genitive”. They are names for what happens to an ending, and the ending has several possible signs — which is lesson 4. Learn them as Arabic terms now and the next chapter will make sense.

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