You, we and they, and the dual

Lesson 5 taught huwa, "he", and hum, "they", standing on their own. This lesson teaches the others the Qur’ān uses most: "you", one man and more than two, and "we". It also teaches the dual: Arabic has a number of its own for two.

The new words

A sentence with no verb

A pronoun standing on its own is most often the subject of its sentence. Where what is said of it is a noun or a phrase, the sentence has no verb: "you are …", "we are …". Arabic needs no word for "is" in such a sentence.

Anta is "you", one man, standing on its own.

Antum is "you", more than two.

The table counts hum apart from lesson 5's hum: in some places the muṣḥaf writes it without the mark of a silent letter (the sukūn) on its m, and the corpus counts each spelling as a unit of its own. They are the same pronoun, and this hum comes after li, as in lesson 12, more often than it stands on its own: lahum, "for them".

Two

For two people or things, Arabic uses the dual. A pronoun of the dual ends in -ā: humā, "the two of them", kumā, "you two".

Baynahumā is bayna, "between", from lesson 8, and humā, "the two of them".

A verb whose doer is two ends in -ā as well in the past, and in -āni in the present; the corpus divides these endings off as pronouns of the dual. A noun in the dual ends in -āni, or -ayni in the genitive and accusative.

In a sentence

This sentence was written for practice. Naḥnu hunā: "we", then "here", and no verb between them.

Reading

الكلمات التي تعرفها كاملةً بعد هذا الدرس مُعلَّمة.

Recall

• Does a sentence like "we are here" need a verb in Arabic?
• What is "you" for more than two?
• How does a pronoun of the dual end?

Answers: no; antum; in -ā, as humā.

Next

The next lesson teaches "those", "after", "at", "with", "some", "other than", "until" and "below", and the noun after them.