Arabic Parts of Speech: Ism, Fiʿl, Ḥarf Explained
Every Arabic word is a noun, a verb or a particle. How to tell an ism, a fiʿl and a ḥarf apart by their signs, with real sentences and two traps.
· Written by Amaan
How do you tell an ism, a fiʿl and a ḥarf apart in Arabic?
Every Arabic word is a noun (ism), a verb (fiʿl) or a particle (ḥarf). A word that starts with ال or ends in ة is a noun. A present-tense verb starts with أ, ن, ي or ت. A particle is a small linking word, such as فِي, “in”. It never takes ال, and it is not a verb.
Arabic grammar sorts every word into three kinds: a noun (ism), a verb (fiʿl) or a particle (ḥarf).
A word that starts with ال, “the”, or ends in ة is a noun: البَيْتُ, “the house”, and مَدْرَسَةٌ, “a school”.
A present-tense verb starts with one of four letters: أ, ن, ي or ت. يَكْتُبُ means “he writes”, and أَكْتُبُ means “I write”.
A particle is a small word that links other words, such as فِي, “in”. It never takes ال, and it is not a verb.
When in doubt, ask whether the word could take ال. يَد, “hand”, starts with ي but becomes اليَد, so it is a noun. Names such as مَرْيَمُ, Maryam, are nouns that show no sign.
Ism, fiʿl, ḥarf: every Arabic word is one of three kinds
English grammar sorts words into many kinds: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and more. Arabic grammar sorts every word into three. A word is a noun, called ism, a verb, called fiʿl, or a particle, called ḥarf. Written in Arabic, the three names are اسْم، فِعْل، حَرْف.
A noun names a person, a place or a thing. A verb says what happens. A particle is a small word that links other words, such as “in”, “to” or “from”.
Because there are only three kinds, some words that English calls adjectives or adverbs are nouns in Arabic. In one of the lesson’s sentences, الرَّجِيمِ, “accursed”, is a noun that describes the devil. الآنَ, “now”, is a noun too, because it starts with ال.
Tradition says that ʿAlī gave Abu al-Aswad a note that read: all speech is noun, verb or particle. Arabic grammar is said to have grown from that note. Abu al-Aswad al-Duʾalī is remembered as one of the earliest Arabic grammarians.
Stop 1.1 of Fasaha’s Naḥw course teaches you to tell the three kinds apart from signs you can see on the word itself.
How to spot a noun: ال at the front, ة at the end
The first sign of a noun is ال, the Arabic word for “the”, written at the front of the word. البَيْتُ is “the house”. الدَّرْسُ, “the lesson”, starts with ال too, so it is a noun.
The second sign is ة at the end of the word. مَدْرَسَةٌ ends in ة, so it is a noun: “a school”. A noun can carry both signs at once. الحَدِيقَةِ, “the garden”, has ال at the front and ة at the end.
When a word shows neither sign, ask whether it could take ال. سُوقٌ, “a market”, can take it and become السُّوق, “the market”, so it is a noun. Verbs and particles never can.
How to spot a present-tense verb: four letters at the front
A present-tense verb starts with one of four letters: أ, ن, ي or ت. The lesson’s examples use each of them. يَكْتُبُ is “he writes”, أَكْتُبُ is “I write”, تَدْرُسُ is “you study”, and نَلْعَبُ is “we play”.
A sentence can start with its verb. In يَدْرُسُ الآنَ, “He is studying now”, the first word, يَدْرُسُ, starts with يَ, so it is a verb: “he studies”.
Particles: the small linking words
A particle is a small word that links other words. فِي means “in”, إِلَى means “to”, and مِنَ means “from”. هَلْ does a different job: it turns a sentence into a yes-or-no question, as in هَلْ تَفْهَمُ الدَّرْسَ؟, “Do you understand the lesson?”
A particle never takes ال, and it is not a verb. Particles are few, so the simplest way to know them is to learn them as words.
Some particles are a single letter, written joined to the next word. A sentence many learners know by heart shows one: أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ, “I seek refuge in God from the accursed devil.” Its second word, بِاللّٰهِ, is بِ, a one-letter particle meaning “in”, joined to the noun اللّٰه. The rest follows the same signs. أَعُوذُ starts with أَ, so it is a verb, مِنَ is a particle, and the last two words start with ال, so they are nouns.
The exercises test three wrong reasons for calling a word a particle. Being short does not make a word a particle. Its place in the sentence does not decide its kind either, because a verb can come before a noun too. And English can mislead you, so test the Arabic word itself: ask what it does in the sentence, and whether it could take ال.
Two traps: يَد and names
Not every word that starts with one of the four letters is a verb. يَد, “hand”, starts with ي, and it is short, but it is a noun, because it can take ال: اليَد. A verb can never take ال, and neither can a particle.
An alif at the front can mislead in the same way. إِلَى, “to”, أَكْتُبُ, “I write”, أُمٌّ, “mother”, and أَرْضٌ, “earth”, all start with an alif. إِلَى only links other words, so it is a particle. أَكْتُبُ is a verb. أُمٌّ and أَرْضٌ can take ال and become الأُمّ and الأَرْض, so they are nouns.
The second trap runs the other way: some nouns show no sign at all. In تَعْمَلُ مَرْيَمُ فِي مَدْرَسَةٍ, “Maryam works at a school”, two words are nouns. مَدْرَسَةٍ ends in ة, so it shows its sign. مَرْيَمُ is a noun because it is a name, but it shows no sign. Later stops in the course come back to nouns like this.
One sentence with all three kinds
The lesson opens with a sentence that has every kind of word: الطَّالِبُ يَقْرَأُ فِي البَيْتِ, “The student reads at home.” It has two nouns, a verb and a particle.
In the app, a shaded word is a word that shows its sign, and a dashed word is a particle, a small linking word. Here the two nouns and the verb are shaded, and فِي is dashed.
- الطَّالِبُ, “the student”, starts with ال, so it is a noun.
- يَقْرَأُ, “he reads”, starts with يَ, one of the four letters that start a present-tense verb, so it is a verb.
- فِي, “in”, links other words and can never take ال, so it is a particle.
- البَيْتِ, “the house”, starts with ال, so it is a noun. Here it means “home”.
How this lesson works in Fasaha
Fasaha’s Grammar section is in Explore, on iOS and Android, and it opens with Naḥw: 58 short lessons called stops, across four levels. A1 is “Read the skeleton”, A2 is “Read the word”, B1 is “Read the sentence”, and B2 is “Choose the form”. “Three kinds of word” is stop 1.1, the first of the sixteen A1 stops, and it is free.
Each stop works in three steps. See it shows the rule at work in real sentences, shaded and dashed as described above. Try it gives warm-ups and proofs. In this stop you tap the verb, the noun or the particle in a sentence, choose why a word is a particle, and listen to a single word and say what kind of word it is. Keep it is for your own words, saved to Your book, with Review.
Every stop is written in each of the app’s languages, not translated. Stop 1.2, “Where words run together”, is free as well and follows on from this one.
The three kinds, word by word
Words from the lesson, each with the sign that tells you its kind, or the reason it has none.
- Noun: البَيْتُ — the house
- Noun: مَدْرَسَةٌ — a school
- Verb: يَكْتُبُ — he writes
- Verb: أَكْتُبُ — I write
- Verb: تَدْرُسُ — you study
- Verb: نَلْعَبُ — we play
- Particle: فِي — in
- Particle: هَلْ — asks a yes-or-no question
- Trap: a noun: يَد — hand
- Noun with no sign: مَرْيَمُ — Maryam
What are ism, fiʿl and ḥarf?
They are the three kinds of word in Arabic grammar. An ism is a noun: it names a person, a place or a thing. A fiʿl is a verb: it says what happens. A ḥarf is a particle: a small word, such as فِي, “in”, that links other words.
How can I tell an Arabic verb from a noun?
Look at the front of the word. A word that starts with ال is a noun, and a present-tense verb starts with أ, ن, ي or ت. If you are unsure, ask whether the word could take ال. A noun can and a verb never can, which is why يَد, “hand”, is a noun.
Are adjectives nouns in Arabic?
Arabic grammar has only three kinds of word, so there is no separate kind for adjectives. In the lesson, الرَّجِيمِ, “accursed”, describes the devil, and it is a noun. Some words that English calls adverbs are nouns too: الآنَ, “now”, starts with ال, so it is a noun.
Is a name a noun if it has no ال and no ة?
Yes. مَرْيَمُ, Maryam, is a noun because it is a name, even though it shows no sign. A word can be a noun without either sign.
What is Fasaha’s Grammar section, and is this lesson free?
Grammar is a section in Explore in the Fasaha app, on iOS and Android. It opens with Naḥw: 58 short lessons, called stops, from A1 to B2, each written in your app language. This lesson is stop 1.1. Stops 1.1 and 1.2 are free; the rest are Premium.
Sources
About Fasaha
Fasaha is a reading-first Arabic app. Every word in a story, a podcast, a video or an article opens into its meaning, root, pattern and family, and can be saved for spaced review.
- Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android.
- Interface languages: English, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Uzbek, Spanish, French, German, Indonesian, Malay, Urdu, Italian, Portuguese, Bengali, Kazakh, Simplified Chinese and Azerbaijani.
- Free to start; Premium opens the complete library and the stores handle billing.
- Grammar in Explore: Naḥw, 58 short lessons from A1 to B2, each written in your app language. Stops 1.1 and 1.2 are free.
Keep reading
- What is iʿrāb? Arabic grammar for readers, with one sentence analysed word by word: Arabic grammar is two sciences: ṣarf builds the word, naḥw places it in the sentence, and iʿrāb is the ending that shows the placement. One six-word sentence carries all three noun cases.
- The Arabic alphabet: 28 letters, four shapes each, and your first words: A table of all 28 letters in their four positions, the dot families that make them easier than they look, and nine first words in the order Fasaha’s Reading Key teaches them.
- Quranic Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect: which Arabic to learn first: Quranic Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic are two stages of one written language, fuṣḥā; a dialect is what people speak at home. How they differ, and where to start for your goal.