Arabic Grammar Guide
Arabic grammar is not a maze — it is a map. English-speaking students often struggle, and many give up their study, because of the technical complexity they see in the terminology. But once the terms are understood through practice, grammar becomes exactly that: a map that carries us to our destination.
Here is every term of Quranic Arabic you need, explained in plain English. May Allah grant us the ability to continue in our goal of learning Arabic to understand the Qur’an.
How to use this guide
Every term sits in one of 8 teaching sections, ordered the way the language builds: from the word, through the phrase, to the sentence and what changes it.
- Looking for one term? Use the search box on the left — it takes Arabic without tashkeel, loose transliteration, or the English meaning.
- Browsing? Open a section in the index on the left.
- New to Arabic? Take the sections in order — they are a syllabus, not an alphabet.
How Arabic builds meaning: utterance, word, compound, and complete speech.
2 terms · 2 groups
Every Arabic word is an ism, a fi'l or a harf — everything else follows from this.
4 terms · 4 groups
The complete construct — the sentence, al-jumla: nominal and verbal, its clause types and what changes it.
2 terms · 2 groups
Two or more words joined, but not yet a sentence: the phrase.
6 terms · 6 groups
Every ism carries four properties at once — definiteness, gender, number and i'rab, the four of (DiGNI). The nouns built from a verb are in The root system.
22 terms · 4 groups
Tense, voice, and the verbs that will not conjugate. The root, its measures and the sound changes are in The root system.
8 terms · 2 groups
The particle by the job it does, split first into those that govern an ending and those that do not.
19 terms · 3 groups
Role, i'rab, category, expression — the four questions that settle any ending, and every term each one needs.
74 terms · 13 groups