Introduction to learning vocabulary – ما مَعْنَى الكلمة؟

This week paved the way to learning vocabulary; which is key if you want to progress in any language – especially the Arabic language! We’ve had nearly 100 words over the week to be tested on; many of which were verbs:

شَكَرَ – He thanked
طَرَدَ – He chased away
فَخَرَ – He boasted

Our ustadh (teacher) did not leave us unguided, however. We received a number of tips to aid our retention of these words, for example:

1) Write words repeatedly (this is brilliant for writing practice too)
2) Read words out loud
3) Put words into context (my favourite; make a story, pick a story)
4) Saturate environment with vocabulary (post-it notes stuck on walls)
5) Use different oral tones (saying غَضِبَ in an angry voice or سَمُحَ in a soft voice)

And plenty more! Personally, I find it’s more effective to fully implement a few tips than attempt using all of them at once.

So as alluded to above I particularly like technique three (use contextual cues) as it allows for deeper processing of word meanings. I tend to find myself grouping the words together into smaller more manageable groups and then link them together into a story. Soon after I was learning more words in less time – try it! It’s also possible to use Quranic verses, narrations of the prophet (ﷺ) and companions, to help memorise vocabulary and it’s usually the moral of the ‘story/scenario/event’ which stays in your head (filling in the details isn’t that hard after). Our ustadh drops such gems on us throughout the lesson… For example:

شَكَرَ (He thanked)

A companion of the prophet Muhammed (ﷺ) came across a Bedouin and heard him earnestly supplicating to his Lord ‘Make me from the few’. So the companion was intrigued and asked ‘why are you asking to be of the few?’ To which the Bedouin responded with the Quranic verse:

(Quran, Chapter 34 Verse 13)

“They made for him what he willed of elevated chambers, statues, bowls like reservoirs, and stationary kettles. [We said], “Work, O family of David, in gratitude.” And few of My servants are grateful.” [English translation Sahih International]

How profound! may Allah make us of the few that are thankful, Ameen! – and that is how we can use context to remember vocabulary.

By mid-week we launched into صَرف (morphology) which is predominately concerned with الفِعال (verbs) and some اسماء (nouns). In Arabic, verbs are inflected with different suffixes and prefixes to denote tense, gender and grammatical person (1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person..). Past tense verbs are called ماضى and present/future tense verbs are called مُضَارِع. The following is a diagram I’ve put together (no copy and paste, I promise!) using Word which shows how past tense verbs are inflected:

 

الفِعْلُ الماضي
Plural	Dual	Singular
فَعَلُوْا	فَعَلا	فَعَلَ	ThirdPerson
فَعَلْنَ	فَعَلَتا	فَعَلَتْ
فَعَلْتُم	فَعَلْتُما	فَعَلْتَ	SecondPerson
فَعَلْتُنَّ	فَعَلْتُما	فَعَلْتِ
		فَعَلْتُ	FirstPerson
		فَعَلْنا

You have to memorise this table and when you have, you can then conjugate any verb into the past tense simply by swapping the root letters. Confusing? Easy? Not to worry; more on this soon…

Throughout the week we also looked at weak letters, short vowels, long vowels, diacritics (harakat), sukoon (pause/stop) and more vocabulary. Thoroughly – as there won’t be time to look at this later when it gets more intense.

In Arabic, حركات (diacritics) are very important as it can change the very meaning of a word. The word حركة linguistically means movement. There are arguably 3 diacritics in Arabic: َ (fatha), ِ  (kasra) and ُ  (dhamma) – making the sounds ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘o’ respectively. It’s safe to say these three diacritics cover the sounds of the 5 English language vowels; with ‘i’ and ‘u’ falling into the last two categories, kasra and dhamma, respectively. The سُكُوْن symbol (ْ )is also very important in Arabic; it represents a halt when placed on a letter. The word سُكُوْن linguistically means peace. A letter with a حركة becomes a مُتَحَرِكة. A letter with a سُكُوْن becomes a سَاكِنة.

Lastly, the weak vowels in Arabic are: و  ي  ا  When these vowels are preceded by a letter with its corresponding حركة (demonstrated below) then the sound is elongated for two counts (aka madd letter):

ا + َ

ي + ِ

و + ُ

We were slowly but surely starting to learn how subtle changes can have a significant impact on word meaning. Even misunderstanding two letters with similar sounds can be detrimental, take for example: كلب (kalb: dog) versus قلب (Qalb: heart) or even…

تين (figs:teen) vs طين ( (dust:Teen)

Imam Ghazali (May Allah have mercy on him) narrated in his ihya uloom adin (I paraphrase): one day he was travelling and feeling hungry. He passed by a person with figs and thought to approach him but the person hid the figs as he did. The person said to Imam Ghazali ‘You’re new here’, to which the he replied ‘I’m Muslim’ so the former asked ‘Do you know Qur’an?’. Imam Ghazali said yes and started to recite surah teen but only from ‘wa-zaytoon …. til the end’. The person was perplexed and asked ‘what happened to wa-teen?’ to which Imam Ghazali smartly replied ‘you hid them under your cloak’.

I know, I laughed too when the ustadh relayed this story to us!

More next week!

Ma’salama!

Arabic saying of the week: ما معنى كلمة؟ – What is the meaning of the word?

Arabic gem of the week: A letter with a sukoon (ْ  ) is called a saakinah.