The Four Properties of ISM

0:00 Assalamualaikum, welcome to lesson one of the language of Quran easier than English. The learning outcomes of the first lesson is to take an overview of the four properties of an ism and inshallah we're going to split this lesson up into two videos. In the first video we will take an overview of the four properties of an ism and in the second video inshallah we're going to look at a'rab which is a unique property of an ism as far as English language is concerned or English speaking

students are concerned so let's begin bismillahirrahmanirrahim the ism and its four properties in the introductory mapping session we looked at in Arabic there are only three types of word every word in the Arabic language will either be an ism, pi'l or harf and the ism is the most comprehensive its singular is ism plural is asma'un and it is a meaningful word that does not have a tense and it can include as far as English comparison is concerned nouns pronouns adjectives adverbs interjections etc it can be

the name of a person place thing an idea action emotion feelings in short it is any word in Arabic that does not fall into the category of fi'alun or harfun so any word that does not fall into those two categories is an ism we also mentioned in the introductory session that there are three signs which if you see in on a word you know that this is an ism and they are tanween at the end tamar buta at the end and of course al at the

beginning so i hope inshallah you can recall those three points they will help make life easy for us inshallah as we progress through the lessons of course this is not the only signs of an ism there are categories and others which we will learn as we go through the lessons inshallah so an ism in short can be a noun pronoun adjective adverbs etc and you can see all not all of them have got tanween of course significant number of them do and they do not all

of them got tamar buta or al at the beginning but this is the basic signs of an ism and it can be any of these types of words in the mapping of Arabic we looked at of course that there were only three types of words words in Arabic ismun fa'alun and harfun they combine together two or more to form what's called a meaningful construct meaningful construct the meaningful construct can be complete tamun in that case it's called a sentence and there are two types of sentence

in Arabic jumla ismiya and jumla fa'aliyya jumla ismiya begins with an ismun jumla fa'aliyya begins and that's the basic definition we need to know for now as for beyond the complete they can also form incomplete constructs things that give us partial meaning but not really a sentence for example this pen this pen and it's a phrase it doesn't complete the sentence they're called in Arabic and there are five that we need to pay special attention to muraqab tawsifi, descriptive phrase, pointing phrase, prepositional phrase, possessive phrase

and conjunctional phrase these are the five most commonly used in Arabic as well as of course in the Quran itself now the point to note here is that we cannot form any of these phrases nor can we form any of the sentence types until we know the four properties of an ismun if we do not understand the four properties we will not be able to make any sense of any structure in Arabic grammar and this is why it's so important to begin with the four properties

the four properties of an ismun are definiteness, gender, number and arab these are the four properties that every ism has now please don't be daunted we have the same thing in English except that we because we speak English fluently we do not necessarily think about it in this way every English speaker knows at least three properties of every noun that he or she uses for example let's take a look at some English examples of words which also have three common properties with the Arabic for example

the word books if I said to you the word books and asked you the question when I say books am I referring to a specific book a specific set of books or general could be any books well you say well when you say books it could be any books so therefore it is non-specific so that will be in grammar considered to be indefinite it is not definite it's non-specific if on the other hand I use the word queens u u e e n s meaning opposite

to kings I asked you is this definite or indefinite you will say of course it's indefinite could be any queens on the other hand if I say to you the kings you will say of course that is definite because the is the definite article in English therefore it is specific the kings for example the kings of Scotland so again we got specific type kings we are talking about here the the word Turkey if I said the word Turkey by that I mean the country not the

bird you will say well that is a proper noun Turkey is the name of a country so this will be definite so you can see here in English you can do that straight away now in English we use gender for example we say a word can be masculine feminine or neutral for example I say she is a girl he is a boy and I say it is a pen it is a pen so we use in English he she and it it is a neutral gender

so if I asked you what is the gender of the word books you will say immediately neutral what about queens well that's easy that will be feminine what about kings well that is masculine and what about the country Turkey well most cases in English you will treat that as neutral so in English you have definiteness and you have gender exactly like we will see in Arabic shortly inshallah now as far as number is concerned in English we have singular and we're plural what I mean by

singular is if I say pen that's one pen if I say pens that's two or more I can have two pens or I can have a thousand pens it doesn't really matter in English a word can be singular or plural that's with any noun in Arabic we will look at shortly but if I asked you the word books is that singular or is it plural I'm sure you're going to say that is plural and if I say queens you'll say immediately plural kings plural Turkey well

this is one country so it will be singular so you can see here immediately you can for you can give me answers to any English word I put up as long as you know the meaning of the word you can tell me it's three properties where English differs with Arabic is in Arab there is nothing equivalent to that in the English language or directly equivalent but three properties you're very very familiar with and my argument to you and I want you to propose this that you

cannot really form a sentence in English nor can you understand English text if you know if you don't know which is which right how is it to be treated you don't want to say for example he are men that that doesn't make sense you should say they are men or you don't say she are men that doesn't make any sense in English either you're supposed to say they are men and you can't say for example he are women you will say they are women or you

will say she is a woman so you need to you know the gender and the number to be able to use English words correctly and exactly the same thing will happen in English as well as in Arabic if you do not know the gender if you do not know the number if you do not know the definiteness you will not be able to form any structures in the Arabic language so in English we have three of the properties let's look at them and their compare and

contrast with Arabic in Arabic of course we got definiteness we got gender we got number and we got Arab Arab is unique inshallah in the second part of the video of lesson one we look at that as an introduction for yourselves so definiteness exactly the same with English there is no difference between English and Arabic we have definite or we have indefinite please note the Arabic terminology at this stage please don't worry about memorising them just understand the concept over usage you will get them so

ma'arifatun means definite nakiratun means indefinite as far as gender is concerned in Arabic we only have two genders please note there is no neutral gender in Arabic so every ismun every noun will be treated either as masculine or feminine masculine or feminine muzakkarun or muannathun muzakkarun or muannathun that's it for every single ismun in Arabic number again we have slight difference between English and Arabic we have singular for one but we also have plural in Arabic but plural in Arabic is three or more not two

or more three or more whereas in Arabic we have a dual which you do not have in English so a word or an ismun in Arabic can be mufradun singular or it could be dual two pens it could be dual muthanna or it could be a plural jamun three or more or million whatever the number you go to this is how the number works in Arabic singular dual and plural which is three or more please note that major distinction between Arabic and English in Arabic we

have a dual version which we do not have in English and also in Arabic we have no neutral gender English has a neutral gender these are the two major differences between the four properties as far as the third one is completely unique so in the next video we will go through it in detail for now please note there are three subcategories as far as Arab is concerned and ismun can be rafa or it can be nasab or it can be jar rafa nasab and jar just

note those two three words now for now inshallah don't worry about their meanings etc at this stage now in order to make life easy in our study particularly in the first 10 12 lessons inshallah until we memorise this terminology i'm going to use short form throughout the notes and through on the screen as well so please make a note of them inshallah first of all for definite we will use d for indefinite we will use i for masculine we will use m italic and for feminine

we'll use f and for singular use s for dual we use d and plural we will we will use p and then for rafa we're going to use r for nasab we're going to use n and for jar we're going to use j also i'll be introducing the arrows which you can see here rafa with the arrow pointing upwards and nasab with an arrow pointing sideways and jar with the arrow pointing or pulling down rafa nasab or jar these are the three and i'll explain why

these arrows inshallah what they mean but this will help us writing a lot of notes on the on the screen it'll save a lot of time when it comes to identification and of course noting it down so if you use these short forms from now on in your own notebooks inshallah you'll be able to make progress so this is just a layout of the map of the four properties of an ism and inshallah reference point to the book is given at the left hand corner which

you can see please make a note of these very very important categories map this is going to help you inshallah progress very quickly so looking at definiteness again there are only two possibilities either an ism will be definite or indefinite so if you like it look at the word examples i've you on the screen here we have a the book of course it is definite because you're listening to it is referring to specifically to the book hamidun is of course definite specific it is a proper

noun london specific because we're talking about the capital city of the united kingdom it's a specific city a specific place who are he specific why because i'm when you use pronouns use them instead of proper nouns you're referring to somebody specific how that this again specific because pointing to something specific as far as book is concerned a book kitabun that is non-specific so it is indefinite books indefinite a man rajulun indefinite and madinatun a city could be any city so this subject of which ism or

which ism is definite which is not in definite inshallah is going to be studied in detail in the next lesson lesson number two please note that and i will share with you it is a very easy subject only seven categories of ism are definite and inshallah you'll note them down in the next lesson so definiteness every ism will be definite or indefinite and you need to know how to identify the definiteness and inshallah we'll cover that in the next lesson every ism in arabic will also

have the property of gender either it will be masculine or feminine if you look at the examples i've given you on the screen inshallah who are he of course it will be masculine he or she will be feminine so you can see that here that is relatively easy here she but a word like ayah ayatun or quran al quranu the quran or ayatun a sign any sign or miracle or a unit of quran madrasatun a school misru egypt etc these are all feminine words on the

other side we have he we have quran hitabun book is masculine mosque is masjidun is also masculine so how do you know which word how to treat it masculine or feminine this subject will be taught in lesson number three and inshallah there i'll share with you a map which you can follow to identify the gender the grammatical gender of any word that you're likely to come across in your studies so this will be covered in lesson number three the gender either masculine or feminine and please

note the terminologies mudhakkarun and muannathun again i said at this stage you don't necessarily need to memorise this either it will be masculine or it will be feminine as far as number of an ism is concerned it can be singular dual or plural so take the example of the word pen i have here a pen but if i wanted to say two pens in arabic and these are here you can see it here two pens but there is no specific word that you can see only

one word there is no word two there is no equivalent needed there because the word means two pens and of course the plural of that is pens so a word can be singular dual or plural i've given other examples on the screen we have muslimun muslimani for two muslims muslimuna or plural meaning three or more muslims and the same thing with book and other words you can do inshallah and we're going to learn how to do that in lesson number four so in lesson number four

we're going to look at the standard singular dual and plurals and in lesson number six we're going to study what's called a broken plural lesson number six inshallah so as far as number is concerned there are three singular mufradun jama'un for plural three or more and we have musanna or dual this is the number and the subcategories the property of number in arabic let's conclude this short video by reviewing what we have covered so far as far as the four properties of an ism are concerned

number one we looked at there are four properties of an ismun and they are definiteness gender number and arab definiteness gender number and arab the four properties please remember that as far as definiteness is concerned two options either it will be specific i.e definite which is known as ma'rifatun in arabic or it will be indefinite nakiratun and then we have gender again we only have two options either it will be masculine which is mudhakkarun or muannathun which is feminine number on the other hand we have

three options we have either it will be singular which is mufradun plural which is three or more jama'un or dual which is musanna and then for arab which is a mystery for us is something new we have not learned as far as english speakers are concerned inshallah we'll pick up in the second video which will be a part of this lesson and it will either be rafa rafaun or it will be nasbun or it will be jarrun these are the three options please note don't worry

about the terminology we will use short form d for definite i for indefinite m for masculine f for feminine and singular s d and p dual and plural and for rafa we're going to use up arrow or r for nasab straight arrow or n and for jar we'll use j that's all you need to note for now please don't be frightened just make a note of this this is absolutely critical for us to understand any make any progress in understanding any arabic text and that is

why i brought this right at the beginning so inshallah that we can go and look at more complex text very soon so in summary in lesson number two we're going to look at definiteness lesson number three we're going to look at gender lesson number four we're going to look at number and lesson one which is the second part of the video inshallah we're going to look at the arab or rafa nasab and jar this will give you the foundation knowledge in order for you to be

able to tackle the map of arabic that i mentioned to you that every word in arabic is either in and we're going to begin our study with the ismoon and they combine together to form sentences and there are only two types of sentences in arabic jumla ismia or jumla faaliyah jumla ismia begins with an ismoon jumla faaliyah begins with a faalun and without knowing the four properties of an ism you will not be able to recognise nor understand nor translate any jumla ismia or jumla faaliyah

of course the same is counted for the phrases there are many different types of phrases but the five that we need to learn are descriptive pointing prepositional possessive and conjunctional phrases so we're going to use the first four lessons to look at the four properties we're going to continue develop the understanding of arab in lesson number six lesson number seven and from lesson number eight and nine we'll cover the propositional phrase 10 and 11 will give us the possessive phrase and pointing phrase we'll do at

lesson number 12 and descriptive phrase inshallah we'll pick up from lesson number three and jumla ismia we're going to pick up from lesson next lesson inshallah lesson number two so you can see a very structured programme all i need you to do is follow the lessons inshallah and you will be able to pick up all of this relatively easily inshallah that's it that's the end of the video i make dua that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala forgives our mistakes rewards are for all the good that we

do may allah subhanu wa ta'ala accept from us our efforts in learning arabic to understand quran may allah subhanu wa ta'ala open the quran for for us all every single day of our lives and make it easier and easier for all of us to understand quran please like share and subscribe and inshallah i'll see you in the next video