Each example below has three parts: the original text, a literal gloss describing how every word works, and a natural translation. The glosses use a few shorthand labels so they stay short. Don't worry about memorising them — this is a reference you can come back to. Person and number · 1sg / 2sg / 3sg — first / second / third person singular (I, you, he/she/it) · 1pl / 2pl / 3pl — first / second / third person plural (we, you-all, they) Gender and case · m / f / n — masculine / feminine / neuter · sg / pl — singular / plural · m.sg — combined: masculine singular (and similarly f.pl, n.sg, etc.) · NOM / ACC / GEN / DAT / INS / LOC — grammatical cases (nominative/accusative/genitive/dative/instrumental/locative) — which role the word plays in the sentence Tense and aspect · PRES — present · PRET — preterite (a finished past event) · IMPF — imperfect (an ongoing or habitual past situation) · FUT — future · PERF — perfect (an action completed with present relevance) · PROG — progressive (action in progress, e.g. am eating) · COND — conditional (would…) Mood · IND — indicative (regular statement) · SUBJ — subjunctive (uncertainty, wishes, doubts) · IMP — imperative (commands) · INF — infinitive (dictionary form: to go, to eat) Other · REFL — reflexive (action on oneself: myself, yourself) · PERS — personal a (Spanish only — marks a human direct object) · HON — honorific (extra-polite form, common in Japanese/Korean) · TOP / SUB / OBJ — topic / subject / object markers (Japanese, Korean) · CL — classifier (Chinese, Japanese, Korean — a counter word for nouns) · NEG — negation
The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters, and all of them represent consonants. Short vowels are not letters but small marks written above or below the consonants — called harakat (fatha for a, kasra for i, damma for u) — and in everyday text they are usually omitted; readers reconstruct them from context. Long vowels are written using the consonant-letters ا و ي. The script is cursive: most letters connect to their neighbours, and each letter has up to four shape variants — isolated, initial, medial, and final — depending on its position in the word. Arabic is read and written from right to left. Half of the 28 letters are 'sun letters' that assimilate with the لـ of the definite article ال, while the rest are 'moon letters' that do not.
Arabic is written from right to left in a cursive script where most letters connect to their neighbours. It is an abjad: the 28 letters represent consonants and the long vowels (ا و ي). Short vowels (fatha a, kasra i, damma u) are diacritics called tashkīl (تَشكيل) and are normally omitted from everyday text — readers reconstruct them from context and word patterns. Beginners' books, the Qur'an, and dictionaries fully vowel the words. Letter shape changes depending on position (initial, medial, final, isolated). Numerals are written left-to-right even inside a right-to-left line. There is no upper/lower case distinction.
Classical and journalistic MSA prefers Verb–Subject–Object (VSO): the verb opens the sentence, followed by its subject, then objects and adverbs. Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) is equally grammatical and is common in modern prose, especially when the subject is topical or emphasised. A peculiarity of VSO: when the verb precedes a plural subject, the verb stays singular and only agrees in gender; in SVO order the verb agrees in number too. Adjectives, possessors and relative clauses follow the noun they modify. Adverbs of time and place are flexible.
Definiteness is marked by prefixing ال (al-) to the noun (and any agreeing adjective). There is no separate indefinite article — a bare noun is indefinite. Before half the alphabet — the 'sun letters' (ت ث د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ل ن) — the لـ of ال assimilates to the following consonant, which is then doubled (shadda). The ال is still written but pronounced as a doubled initial. Before 'moon letters' (the rest) the ل is pronounced clearly. The initial alif of ال is also elided in pronunciation when the previous word ends in a vowel.
Arabic nouns and adjectives are either masculine or feminine; there is no neuter. The default is masculine. A noun is almost always feminine if it ends in tā' marbūta ة (a final -a that becomes -at- when a suffix follows), and it is feminine if it refers to a female being, a paired body part (يَد hand, عَيْن eye), or is on a short closed list of feminine cities and countries (مِصْر Egypt). Verbs, adjectives and pronouns all agree with the noun's gender. Forming a feminine adjective or participle from a masculine one is normally as simple as adding ة.
Almost every Arabic word is built from a consonantal root — most often three consonants — that carries an abstract meaning. The root is poured into templates ('patterns', أَوْزان) of vowels and affixes to derive concrete nouns, verbs and adjectives. The root ك-ت-ب 'writing' yields kataba (he wrote), yaktubu (he writes), kātib (writer), kitāb (book), maktab (office), maktaba (library), maktūb (written). Learning to recognise the root inside an unfamiliar word lets you guess its meaning. Dictionaries are organised by root, not alphabetically by surface form, so finding مَكْتَبة means looking under ك-ت-ب.
Arabic has independent (subject) pronouns and attached suffix pronouns that mark possession on nouns and objects on verbs and prepositions. The independent set distinguishes gender from the 2nd person upwards and has a dual form (two people) alongside singular and plural. Subject pronouns are usually dropped because the verb already shows person, gender and number. The suffix set glues directly onto a noun (بَيْت → بَيْتي 'my house', بَيْتُك 'your house'), a verb (رَأَيْتُك 'I saw you'), or a preposition (مَعي 'with me').
Classical Arabic has three cases shown by short-vowel endings (iʿrāb): nominative -u (subject and predicate of a non-verbal sentence), accusative -a (direct object, adverbial complements), and genitive -i (after prepositions and as the second member of a noun-noun construct/idāfa). Indefinite nouns add nunation: -un, -an, -in (written ـٌ ـً ـٍ). Because these endings are short vowels, they are usually not written in modern unvowelled text and not pronounced in news or conversation; only the accusative indefinite -an is reliably both written and pronounced (with a final alif: ـًا). Learners should recognise endings rather than reproduce them perfectly.
Arabic verbs are conjugated for two basic 'tenses' (better called aspects): the perfect (الماضي), which describes completed action — usually translated as the English past — and the imperfect (المُضارِع), which describes ongoing or habitual action — usually translated as present or future. The perfect uses suffixes only. The imperfect uses prefixes plus suffixes. Every form encodes person (1st/2nd/3rd), number (singular/dual/plural) and gender (from the 2nd person upwards). The imperfect has three moods — indicative (-u), subjunctive (-a) and jussive (no ending) — selected by particles that precede the verb. The citation form of a verb is the 3rd-person masculine singular perfect: kataba 'he wrote'.
The perfect is formed from a fixed stem (the citation form kataba is the 3sg masc) by adding personal suffixes: -tu (I), -ta (you m), -ti (you f), — (he, this is the bare stem), -at (she), -nā (we), -tum (you pl m), -tunna (you pl f), -ū (they m), -na (they f). The vowel after the second root consonant in the stem varies by verb (kataba 'wrote', sharība 'drank', kabura 'grew big'); you memorise it per verb. Negation of the past uses ما + perfect, or لَمْ + jussive imperfect (see negation).
The imperfect attaches BOTH a prefix and a suffix to a stem (for the root k-t-b the stem is -ktub-). Prefixes: ʾa- (I), ta- (you m sg / she), ta- + -īna (you f sg), ya- (he), ya- + -ūna (they m), na- (we), ta- + -ūna (you pl m). The default mood is the indicative, which ends in -u for singular forms and in -na for the plural -ūna/-īna; this -u/-na drops in the subjunctive and jussive. The same conjugation expresses simple present, habitual present and present continuous — Arabic does not distinguish them grammatically.
There is no separate future conjugation. The future is formed by placing one of two particles before the indicative imperfect: the prefix سَـ (sa-) for the near future ('will, going to'), written attached to the verb, or the separate word سَوْفَ (sawfa) for a slightly more distant or emphatic future. The two are interchangeable in most contexts; سَوْفَ feels more formal. Negation of the future uses لَنْ (lan) + subjunctive imperfect — 'will never / will not'.
Negation depends on what is being negated. لا (lā) negates the present indicative ('does not'). ما (mā) negates the past ('did not'). لَمْ (lam) also negates the past but takes a jussive imperfect verb after it — لَمْ + jussive is the more standard MSA past negation. لَنْ (lan) negates the future and takes a subjunctive. لَيْسَ (laysa) is the special verb used to negate a present-tense non-verbal (nominal) sentence — it inflects like a perfect verb but means 'is not'.
Yes/no questions are formed by adding the particle هَلْ (hal) at the start of an otherwise normal statement; in literary Arabic the alternative particle أ (a-) is prefixed to the first word. No change in word order is needed and intonation alone (no particle) is also possible, especially in speech. Content questions use a wh-word at the start: ما (mā) what (for things), مَنْ (man) who, أَيْنَ (ayna) where, مَتى (matā) when, كَيْفَ (kayfa) how, لِماذا (limādhā) why, كَمْ (kam) how many. ما before a verb becomes ماذا (mādhā).
Arabic has a dual (for exactly two) and two kinds of plural. The 'sound' plural is regular: masculine human nouns add ـونَ (-ūna) in the nominative, ـينَ (-īna) elsewhere; feminine nouns swap ة for ـات (-āt). The 'broken' plural is internal: the consonants of the root are repoured into a new vowel pattern, often unpredictable, and must be memorised with the singular (kitāb → kutub, walad → awlād, rajul → rijāl). Most everyday non-human nouns and many human masculine nouns take broken plurals. Crucially, plurals of non-human things take feminine singular agreement.
Attributive adjectives follow the noun they describe and agree with it in three things: gender, number, and definiteness. If the noun has ال, the adjective takes ال too. Indefinite noun → indefinite adjective. A predicate adjective in a non-verbal sentence agrees in gender and number but is left INdefinite — the contrast in definiteness is what makes the sentence 'X is Y' rather than 'the Y X'. A vital quirk: plurals of non-human things (objects, animals, ideas) take FEMININE SINGULAR agreement, regardless of the singular's gender.
In the present tense, Arabic has no overt verb 'to be'. A nominal sentence simply juxtaposes a definite subject with an indefinite predicate, and the copula is understood: al-baytu kabīr-un 'the-house big' = 'the house is big'. For the past tense, the verb كانَ (kāna 'he was') is used and conjugates like any other perfect verb; its complement (the predicate noun or adjective) goes into the accusative case. The same verb كان is also used in compound constructions: كانَ يَكْتُبُ 'he was writing' (past habitual/continuous = kāna + imperfect). The future of 'to be' is سَيَكونُ.