Who, which, this, that, he and they

The second lesson's pronouns are joined to a word. Arabic also has pronouns that stand on their own, words that point ("this", "that"), and words that stand for a person or a thing ("who", "the one who"). This lesson teaches the commonest of them, and the one-letter word that turns a sentence into a question.

The new words

The one who

Alladhī is "the one who" or "which", and it begins a description of someone or something. It changes its shape for the number and gender of who it describes: alladhīna is "those who".

The corpus gives alladhīna the lemma alladhī, and marks it as masculine and plural.

Man is "who". Most often in the Qur’ān it means "the one who" or "whoever"; less often it asks "who?".

This and that

Hādhā is "this", for what is near, and dhālika is "that", for what is further off.

This sentence was written for practice. Hādhā qalamī: "this", then qalam, "pen", with ī, "my", from the second lesson. Arabic needs no word for "is" in a sentence like this one.

He and they

Huwa is "he" or "it", standing on its own, and hum is "they".

The second word of this verse is huwa. The corpus gives huwa no lemma; it names it by its person, gender and number, as it names the joined pronouns.

Asking

A-, the letter hamzah written on an alif and joined to the front of a word, makes a sentence a question.

A-lam is a-, the question, and lam, "did not", from the last lesson: "did … not?".

Reading

الكلمات التي تعرفها كاملةً بعد هذا الدرس مُعلَّمة.

Recall

• What is the difference between hādhā and dhālika?
• What lemma does the corpus give alladhīna?
• What does a- do at the front of a word?

Answers: hādhā is "this", for what is near, and dhālika "that", for what is further; alladhī; it makes the sentence a question.

Next

The next lesson teaches the first verbs: "said", "was", "made", "came" and "knew".