The root: three letters and what is built on them

Most words of Arabic are built on a root: usually three letters, which stay in their order while vowels and other letters are put around them. Stage 1 named a word's root in passing. This stage is about the root and what is built on it. The corpus gives the root of most words, and this lesson teaches you to read it.

The new words

One of them, aḥyā, carries the religion in the Qur’ān's use of it: the course gives no meaning of its own for it, and you read it in the verses, with the edition's meaning beside them.

A root and its pattern

The root k-t-b gives kataba, "wrote". The same letters with i after the first and a long ā after the second give kitāb, from lesson 10. The letters are the root, and what is put around them is the pattern.

Katabat is kataba with -at, from lesson 6, for a feminine doer: the root k-t-b with a after each letter, then the ending. The corpus gives it the root k-t-b.

This sentence was written for practice. It has kataba with no ending, and kitāban, and both have the root k-t-b. Here kitāb is an everyday book; in the Qur’ān its meaning is read from the verse.

A family of words

Words of one root often have to do with each other, and one verb can stand behind several nouns. The root m-w-t is the root of three of this lesson's words.

Yamūtu is the present of māta, "died": ya- and the root, with its middle letter as a long ū, as in yaqūlu in lesson 17.

Al-mawta is al- and mawt, "death", in the accusative. Here the middle letter of the root is said as w.

Wa-amwātan is wa and amwāt, a broken plural: the corpus gives it the lemma mayyit, "dead", and marks it masculine plural.

Forms of one root

A root can make more than one verb, as lesson 18 showed. Kharaja, "went out", is of the first form, and akhraja, "brought out", from lesson 18, is of form IV. Both have the root kh-r-j.

Yakhruju is the present of kharaja.

The root ḥ-y-y is the root of aḥyā, of form IV, and of ḥayāh, "life".

Wa-aḥyā is wa and aḥyā: the corpus marks it form IV, with the root ḥ-y-y.

Li-ḥayātī is li, then ḥayāh, then ī, "my". Before a pronoun the -ah of a feminine noun is said -at.

A root is a help and not a meaning

Knowing a root helps you to see that two words are of one family. It does not tell you what a word means: a word's meaning is what its use shows, and the table gives it where the course may. A word of the Qur’ān is read with the edition's meaning beside it.

Yaḥmilu is the present of ḥamala, with the root ḥ-m-l. The root shows that the two are one verb; "carried" comes from the table.

Reading

The words you know whole after this lesson are marked.

Recall

• How many letters has a root, as a rule?
• Which root have māta and mawt?
• What are the letters of the root around which kitāb is built?

Answers: three; m-w-t; k-t-b.

Next

The next lesson teaches the first form of the verb, and the vowels its past and its present take.