Brother, father, owner: a case shown with a long vowel

Most nouns show their case with a short vowel at the end. A few short nouns show it with a long one when they are joined to what follows. This lesson teaches three of them, with five more words for people.

The new words

u, a, i made long

Akh, "brother", and ab, "father", take a long vowel at the end when a word or a pronoun follows, and dhū, "owner of", when a word follows: ū in the nominative, ā in the accusative, ī in the genitive. With -ī, "my", there is no such ending: it takes the ending's place, as lesson 14 showed in abī, so akhī serves in every case.

Wa-akhūhu is wa, then akhū, then hu, "his". The corpus marks akhū nominative.

Akhā, and the corpus marks it accusative. The word after it is the second noun of an iḍāfah, as lesson 8 taught.

Akhīhi is akhī and hi. The corpus marks akhī genitive; after ī, the pronoun hu is said hi, as lesson 12 taught.

Abī, the same ending on ab: the corpus marks it genitive. Here ī is the ending and not "my": the corpus shows no pronoun on it. The word after it is the second noun of the iḍāfah.

Dhū

Dhū does not stand alone: it is the first noun of an iḍāfah, and says that someone or something has what follows it.

Dhū, nominative.

Dhā, accusative. The corpus gives this form a lemma of its own, dhā, and does not count it under dhū.

Dhī, genitive, and the corpus gives it the lemma dhū again. In all three the ending follows the case, as it does on akh and ab.

In a sentence

Three sentences written for practice show the same noun in three cases.

Akhūka: nominative, the subject of the sentence.

Akhāka: accusative, the one seen.

Akhīka: genitive, after maʿa.

More words for people

Ābāʾ, abnāʾ and azwāj are broken plurals, the kind lesson 9 explained.

Wa-ābāʾukum is wa, then ābāʾu, then kum, "your". Ābāʾ is taught as a word of its own, because the corpus gives it a lemma of its own beside ab, and marks it masculine plural.

Abnāʾahum is abnāʾa and hum, "their". The corpus gives it the lemma ibn, "son", and marks it masculine plural.

Azwājan: the corpus gives it the lemma zawj, and marks it masculine plural.

An-nisāʾa is al- and nisāʾ. The corpus marks it feminine plural. It has no singular from the same root.

Al-insānu is al- and insān, and the corpus marks it masculine, nominative.

Reading

Maneno unayoyajua kikamilifu baada ya somo hili yamewekewa alama.

Recall

• Which long vowel does akh take in the accusative?
• What is the first noun of an iḍāfah that says someone has something?
• What lemma does the corpus give abnāʾ?

Answers: ā, akhā; dhū; ibn.

Next

The next lesson teaches eight nouns of the world around us, and how a noun is made definite.