We have learnt so far things related to the GENDER of the ism so far, at least parts of it, and today in sha’a Allah we are going to talk about the second attribute of the nouns, and that is the number.
NUMBER الْعَدَدُ ( Al ‘Adad )
We already learnt that in the Arabic language we have singular, dual and plural, and today in sha’a Allah we are going to learn the types and the way to construct some of them, while others need to be learnt by heart.
We are not going to dig too deep into the singular, as it is clear that ever ISM originally comes in it’s singular form. And we also learnt about the masculine and feminine gender, so in sha’a Allah you can revise the lessons from before. We are going to go straight to the dual.
THE DUAL- AL MUTHANNAA
The dual tells us about 2 of something or someone. It is formed by adding the suffix fathah, alif and noon with kasrah ـَانِ in the nominative case ( حَالَةُ الرَّفْعِ ) and fathah, yaa with sukkoon and noon with kasrah ــَيْنِ for both, the genitive and accusative cases FOR THE MASCULINE NOUNS.
Examples PICTURE 1
Example from Qur’an:
وَأَمَّا الْجِدَارُ فَكَانَ لِغُلَامَيْنِ يَتِيمَيْنِ فِي الْمَدِينَةِ
And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city 18: 82
As FOR THE FEMININE, the taa marbootah ة will change to an ordinary ‘taa’ ت in the dual. The suffixes ــَانِ ( for NOMINATIVE CASE ) and ــَيْنِ ( for ACCUSATIVE and GENITIVE CASE ) will be added just like in the masculine nouns.
Example PICTURE 2
Example from the Qur’an:
جَعَلْنَا لِأَحَدِهِمَا جَنَّتَيْنِ مِنْ أَعْنَابٍ
We granted to one of them two gardens of grapevines 18: 32
So it is very easy to make the dual of the feminine and masculine nouns.
NOTE: This is for the nouns which have a ‘taa marbootah’, those that do not have a taa marbootah, their dual is formed just like the one for masculine nouns.
PLURAL- AL JAM’U
There are two types of plurals:
1. Sound Plural الْجَمْعُ السَّالِمُ
2. Broken Plural الْجَمْعُ الْمُكَسَّرُ
Sound Plural الْجَمْعُ السَّالِمُ
In the formation of the SOUND PLURAL, THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE NOUN DOES NOT CHANGE. It has different masculine and feminine forms and is formed by suffixing dammah, waw with sukkoon and noon with fathah ــُوْنَ in NOMINATIVE, and kasrah, yaa with sukkoon and noon with fathah ــِيْنَ in the ACCUSATIVE and GENITIVE CASES to the end of the MASCULINE NOUNS.
Example PICTURE 3
For FEMININE SOUND PLURALS fathah, alif and ‘taa’ with tanween dammah ــَاتُ is suffixed for the NOMINATIVE, and fathah, alif and ‘taa’ with tanween kasrah ــَاتٍ is suffixed for the ACCUSATIVE and GENITIVE CASES
PICTURE 4
NOTE: In the singular form we observe that the nominative, accusative and genitive cases are evident by the harakah ( -u, -a, – i ) of Muslimun, i.e. tanween dammah ( – un ), tanween fathah ( -an ) and tanween kasrah ( – in ). This is called AL I’RAAB Bi Al HARAKAH ( The i’raab with the harakah ).
In the dual and plural forms, the i’raab are not evident with harakah but represent the nominative, accusative and genitive case with the use of letters such as ـَانِ ـُونَ ـِينَ .
One of the examples you can find in the Quran in surah number 33 ayah 35.
Broken Plural الْجَمْعُ الْمُكَسَّرُ
Unlike sound plurals, where the original form of the word is retained, the broken plural is formed by making internal changes to the structure of the nouns by means of deletions, prefixes and suffixes. So unlike, the sound plurals, here one really has to memorize how the plural for the noun is constructed as it depends from noun to noun and can not be constructed as the sound plurals.
PICTURE 5
Here we see that the formation of the dual is the same as that of the sound plural in the nominative, accusative and genitive cases.
And indeed, these need to be learnt by heart in order to know them.
As you might have noticed, the plural for WOMAN is NISAA, here in this case you see that the whole structure and even letters are different, so one more sign that it really needs to be learnt by heart.
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