Arabic is built from just three kinds of word: the ism (a noun-plus — names, descriptions, pronouns and more), the fi'l (a verb, an action tied to a time), and the harf (a particle with meaning only when joined to something else, like “in,” “from” or “not”). Every single word in the Qur'an is one of these three. It sounds almost too simple, but it is the map the whole language hangs on: once you can tell which of the three a word is, you already know what questions to ask of it.

From the free course The Language of Quran — Easier than English (Book 1) (LoQ1), taught by Ustad Muhammad Arjan Ali.