Al-Māḍī — The Perfect Tense

0:00 Asalaamu Alaikum, welcome to lesson 2 of book 2 of the language of Quran easier than English. In this lesson our aim and goal primarily is to study the perfect tense, i.e. one of the three main types of verbs in Arabic. It is this verb from which all the other verbs are said to be derived and it is a very simple one to learn, the foundation of it insha'Allah ta'ala and we will learn how for each verb and the past tense ma'adi, the perfect tense, there are 14 variations, one for each of the pronouns that we studied before, even from book 1 where we studied the detached rafa pronouns.

0:37 Then insha'Allah we are going to take a very close look at every component of the verb, all the things that are added to the root. The main reason for that is that we want to be able to understand everything that is going on with the perfect tense verb because every verb that we come across afterwards, every ma'adi will have the same suffixes, so if we understand them we should be able to be in a position to recognise thousands and thousands of verbs in the Arabic language. And above all insha'Allah you will learn how easily to conjugate verb for form 1 which is on the scale of fatha, sami'a, karuma insha'Allah ta'ala.

1:15 So a lot to cover, again we will begin with the blessed name of Allah by saying Bismillahir rahmanir rahim and making dua, Rabbi zidni ilma, oh my lord increase me in knowledge. Every verb in the Arabic language has 3 essential pieces of information. Firstly, we remember from book 1 that there are only 3 types of words in Arabic.

1:40 Every word is either an ismun, fi'alun or harfun. A verb is a word that describes an action, always in reference to a tense. If it does not have a tense it is not a verb.

1:50 It can describe an action but it will not be a verb unless it has a tense. This is a very important definition insha'Allah. So the 3 pieces of information that we see in every verb in Arabic, number 1 it will have the meaning of the action, so for example here in Arabic I have fathahtu which translates into English I open, so the action is to open, that is a basic action.

2:17 So the first thing a verb will have is the 3 root letters which will give us the name of the action or the action itself. Then we have the doer. Every verb, please make a note of this, every verb will have a doer in the form of a pronoun.

2:33 In the example that I have here is fathahtu, I opened. Of course the third information very easily we can decipher from this is that this is the past tense. Again how do I know that in the Arabic? Because of the scale.

2:47 Once you recognise the scale you will be able to recognise a past tense ma'di and the doer for any verb that you come across even though you may or may not know the meaning of the root which you can look up in the dictionary but you can definitely identify that this is the pronoun and this is the root letters and this is the past tense of course later on we will look at the present and future tenses called al mudari and also the command form. So these 3 pieces of information are in every verb. Of course there is a lot more we can go into but these 3 are absolutely critical.

3:21 So a verb in Arabic always has a tense. It expresses an action, occurrence, a state or a being and it has a very rich system as I mentioned that everyone has a pronoun so you will know from there the tense, the number, the person doing the action, is it singular, dual or plural, is it the first person i.e. me speaking or we or is it they or he or she which is the third person or you which is the second person. So the 3 main tenses in Arabic are firstly al ma'di or al fi'lul ma'di the perfect tense verb.

3:56 I am going to translate it as perfect tense because even though it is very similar to the English past tense it has some other connotation in it. So na sa ra means he helped. The translation in the past tense action has already been done.

4:11 So in Arabic it is called the perfect tense because it describes an action that is complete at the time of speaking or more importantly we will see exceptions for this also insha'Allah an action that is certain to be done meaning it will be done. It is so certain to be done that they use the past tense scale. So its better translation is the perfect tense.

4:33 In definition an action that is certain to be done or has been done at the time of speaking and this is al ma'di ma'din without the al, al ma'di the perfect tense. So al fi'lul ma'di the perfect tense verb. Then we have the imperfect tense.

4:54 Now imperfect tense in English can be translated as present, present continuous as well as the future tense. So we have here yan suru, yan suru which means in Arabic, translated into English he helps, he is helping or he will help. All three can be included in here of course how do you tell the difference? In context of how they are used.

5:17 So it is the present habitual, present continuous as well as the future tense. All three incorporated into al mudare and therefore I am going to refer to it as the imperfect tense, imperfect tense, please note. Then we have the command. Command is when I command or request or appeal to you to do something. This is called imperative. So again the version of that for this particular root, un sur help, un sur help.

5:44 So in English I have translated with exclamation mark. So it is called imperative command or request form. These are the three primary categories in terms of conjugation as well as information of the three main categories of verbs. Of course I mentioned in the introduction there is the passive, there is the active, there is also the prohibition etc. But they usually are a derivation of these. So if you get these three you got the major parts inshallah ta'ala.

6:10 So again there are only three categories as far as tense is concerned. Al maadi, the perfect, al mudare, the imperfect and also the imperative. We are going to begin our study by looking at the perfect tense verb.

6:27 Al maadi, perfect tense verb, example Nasara, he helped, an action that has been done or certain to be done. We have the scale of it for the thulasi mujarrad, please note, again go back to the introduction video, I'm going to be talking primarily about this one until we get to that level inshallah. It's very basic, it has only three root letters.

6:51 The first root letter is represented by the letter Fa. The second root letter is represented by Ayn and the third root letter is represented by Laam. So the first, second and third. Please note, for the past tense, al maadi, the first root letter is fixed, it will always have a fatha. And the last root letter will always have a fatha. But the middle root letter can have a variation.

7:15 So it can have a fatha, which is zabar, or zair, or kasra, or damma, which is pesh. These are the names also given to it. So you have fatha, zabar, damma, pesh, or kasra, zair, for all the middle root letter only, the first and the last is fixed. So the scale is very easy to recognise, it is three root letters and nothing else. So this group that we are studying now is called Thulasi, meaning three, Mujarrad, Bair, nothing else. Thulasi, Mujarrad.

7:47 And for the maadi, it's a very simple scale. So the only variation we will see is whether the middle root letter takes a fatha, damma, or kasra for the standard verb, which is the active, not the passive form, which we will look at inshallah ta'ala in forthcoming lesson. So this leads to three possibilities, of course, you can see, first, second root letter.

8:08 With the changes in the second root letter, we can have fa'ala scale. So we have here two examples, fatha, he opened, nasara, he helped, nasara, he helped. The second possibility, we can have fa'ila, fa'ila. So we have samia, samia, he heard, alima, he knew. So samia and alima, they follow the fa'ila scale. Then we have the third possibility, where the middle root letter takes a pesh or damma, we have fa'ula, and of course is ka'ruma.

8:48 So these are the three possible scales. Middle root letter being the variation, so fa'ala, fa'ila, fa'ula, all past tense verb for form one will conform to one of these three scales, and it is from there that we will conjugate. Now the question you're going to ask me is how do I know which is which? You don't.

9:09 The way to get it is from the dictionary or to look at an example. Very soon you'll be able to recognise them easily, but for now, we need to know which root goes through what it produces. We cannot produce words on our own, we've got to go to the words that have already been used.

9:22 Of course, this is relatively easy for us, because our job is not to produce the language, our job is to understand and recognise. So of course, when we see the verbs in this scale, we know that it is the form one and it is the past tense. So this is the base form of the three root letter verb.

9:40 Now if you recall, going back to book one, lesson number five onwards, I did emphasise to you the importance of learning the pronouns. So we'll be using the pronouns inshallah ta'ala here in this course to learn verbs, and I mentioned there, if you learn them well, you'll be able to reproduce the verbs a lot, lot quicker. So the 14 pronouns that I asked you to learn then, they're relatively easy inshallah, I hope you've memorised.

10:04 If you haven't, please go back and do memorise them. They're going to be very useful for your study. So we have hua, we have huma, then we have hum. Then we have here, she, huma, hunna. Then we have anta, antuma, antum. And then we have anti, antuma, antunna. Then of course we have ana and nahnu. So there will be a verb in the position of each of these pronouns, 14 verbs representing 14 pronouns within it. And that's why I've numbered this table between 1 and 14.

10:41 Please follow my instruction, follow this order. It will remove a lot of confusion, especially when we go to mudara if you stick to this order. I know there are other ways of learning, you start with the first person first, there's nothing wrong with it, I'm not saying it's wrong, all I'm saying is it will be easier for you to understand the conjugation in my view if you follow this method.

10:58 So we have 14 pronouns that we will now replace each one with a verb on the root. Please know we don't need to use a pronoun in there because the pronoun is already embedded within the verb in its meaning and in most cases with something to indicate that that is the pronoun we are referring to. So we have a table here inshallah where you can see.

11:23 The most important thing, again I'm going to put the pronouns back in, now you can see on the table hua, huma, hum, hiya, huma, hunna, anta, antuma, antum, anti, antuma, antunna, ana, nahnu. I left a little line there to know how you can translate in there but this is the pronoun. You will see another box underneath which has for example in this one you will see I've got here written hua and I've got mustathir, here I've got huma, I've got alif, hum I've got waw.

11:53 Please don't worry I'll explain all of this in detail. So I've designed this table now to simplify your learning. At this stage it's not available for you to download but inshallah very soon there will be a website where you can download from and the link will be in the description.

12:06 So as soon as the site is up and running I will put it in the description inshallah ta'ala. I just haven't had, I was relying on anyway, I was relying on somebody else to do it but it's not been done yet. As soon as it's done inshallah I will let you know.

12:18 So if you're asking for these forms that you're going to see in this video and subsequent please continue to check the description and I'll put the link there. I apologise in advance I didn't want to hold the videos any longer and just release them so that's the reason. But you'll get this form.

12:32 I designed it to help you to learn conjugation very very easily. So I'll explain each of these inshallah ta'ala but this will help you. Few other points before I put the verbs and things in that you need to note is that each verb will have 14 different forms.

12:47 So in effect I'm going to replace the pronoun and put the verb here for each one. Each of these 14 forms are going to be within them they're going to have this pronoun here for example waw will represent hum and then nun with the fatha will represent hunna and tum will represent antum and these will be suffixes added to the verb. So we'll have 14 variation of the same verb and this is very very important and major distinction between English and Arabic.

13:17 Each form has a very technical name in Arabic. They have like al-ghaib, mutakallim etc etc and then you have the singular, dual and plural version of it etc and these are all very difficult at the beginning to memorise these terminology. I feel that the numbering system will be a lot easier for you.

13:37 Once you've learned the code you can easily go back and memorise them and I don't believe that memorising lots of terminology at the beginning is going to give you any benefit. Most likely most students will run away. So please forgive me I'm going to use this method instead.

13:49 I'm going to call them sigha each one okay it's called a sigha and each one I'm going to number them and your brain will soon inshaAllah tell you 1 to 14 in this order and this is why I taught you the pronouns in this order I hope and I pray you will stick to this order again I'm not saying another order is wrong but this is a lot lot easier. So you have 14 pronouns in 14 boxes and then we'll have 14 verbs in those 14

boxes each box is numbered called a sigha most important is 1 and 4 and that's why I've highlighted it in black but each one in the past tense you'll have the doer embedded within the verb and that is represented by something which is coloured in red and the pronoun that it represents comes first so everything's covered in one sheet so you don't have to make lots of notes as long as you understand it this will become your reference point inshaAllah Conjugation of the perfect tense al

maadi on the scale of fa, a, la, fa, ala we're now going to conjugate 14 forms of the verb fataha which means he opened please note the three root letters fa, ta, and ha I'm going to go through relatively slowly so again this has the risk of making the video long and a lot of people comment they want short videos but I really am not here to entertain you I'm here to make sure that you're learning as much as I can give you within the resources

that I have in front of me so forgive me if the videos are too long and if you find them wrong please come back you can always pause and restart it's not a problem and I've got time stamps throughout the video inshaAllah so you can forward to that position so let's conjugate first if I do it slowly and please make sure as you're doing it you have some form of writing in front of you a white not a blank sheet but rule to let a book

or notebook or a blank sheet of paper doesn't really matter what it is in which you can replicate what I'm writing on the screen it will be good not on the first time but a second time you do it to use different colours that I will be using inshaAllah ta'ala you can choose your own colour system but most important so that the points highlight in your brain and it remains there inshaAllah ta'ala and your heart so you can recall that information relatively quickly so I want

to say first he opened the hint of what I'm saying is inside the box which is here you can see he opened originally of course you know who was there in the box before who are he so of course we want the verb for that and it's a very simple verb the scale is fa'ala so fa-ta-ha fa-ta-ha as you can see the scale at the top fa'ala and just put fatha fatha fatha middle root letter taste a fatha now I want to say I said hua

fataha I want to say huma now I don't need to repeat hua fataha because an Arab person knows fataha means he opened is already in built within his brain as well as he knows that from the scale I want to say huma now huma is fa-ta-ha the same root and I will now put on it fa-ta-ha so we got our three root letters with the fatha fatha fatha but the huma version has an alif this alif represents huma so from now on you say what is

the doer you say alif what does it mean huma so again I put it here for your easy reference next I want to say hum, hum is actually represented by waw, waw so this waw here is the is the pronoun that's doing the action and what is this waw represented hum so I got to add waw to my root so I got I got fa-ta-cha I add the waw now the waw prefers this waw is sukoon does not have any vowels on it so the waw

with sukoon prefers to have a dhamma in front so what happens is that the waw with sukoon prefers to have a dhamma in front so it becomes fa-ta-hu fa-ta-hu so the only reason why the ha is taking a dhamma instead of fatha is because of the waw one more very important point when we have three root letters let's say for example wajada, wajada, wajada now imagine Arabic is not written with vowel signs right so normal Arabic modern standard is not written like this if I wanted

to say wajadu for example I put waw there this waw has the risk of being confused with the waw of a and d and right because there's no vowel signs and dal does not allow you to join anything after it so there'll be a space some people may confuse that with waw of and so they will read it and misjudge it for that reason after this version of version number three of hum there is an extra alif added this alif has no value in terms of

do or anything like this simply it's called the alif of protection and it protects the waw being confused with the waw of and so we have two additions there the waw which represents hum and then extra alif to protect that waw from being mistaken so let me colour the waw with red so we can easily identify the doer so we have fataha he opened fataha huma opened they opened fatahu hum opened as in they masculine plural opened now I want to say here she opened which

is our number four I got my fataha the she opened is exactly the same as fataha except I added ta at the end which has a sukoon please note this ta has a sukoon there is no vowel on it and this time I'm going to colour in purple inshallah ta'ala so it is fatahat please note fataha there is nothing added here to indicate it is huwa so it is called mustatir in Arabic I'll explain that later which means hidden same is the case with here so

the ta is not here ta is just telling me it's feminine that's all so it is not the masculine it is the feminine version of the verb so fataha we translate as he opened fatahat she opened this she part is not represented by the ta is just the fact that it tells us it's feminine the doer is hidden please note that with number one and number four now we come to number five which is again the feminine version of huma so we go to fatahat same

so we got our feminine here as well and then the huma is represented by alif so here the alif represents the doer but the ta represents feminine that represents feminine and the alif represents the huma version now alif prefers to have a fataha before so it becomes instead of sukoon fatahata not fatahata like this because you can't elongate the sound there so it's fatahata please note that okay so the ta is the same ta as we got in number four but here we are adding a

fataha to it in order to accommodate the alif that is coming after now the next one is hunna version hunna version again I have got my three root letters and then we add the noon fataha na here represents the doer so hunna is represented by na noon fataha that's it the ha from now on will start taking a sukoon so for number six onwards till number 14 the ha will not have any vowel it will take a sukoon now there is a reason for that is

because the rest of the vowel the rest of the doers I should say the you see them added have a vowel sign on them and that is the reason why we have the sukoon fatahna not fatahana okay fatahana please note that and this will be the case you don't need to know that all you need to remember is from number six onwards the rest are very easy because the third root letter has a sukoon and then you add a simpler suffix to the end so I

want to now say you as in of course in Arabic we have three different you for masculine and we have three different for feminine all of them in English will be translated as you but in Arabic there is a difference so I want to say anta I will say fatah that can you see how easy that is fatahta anta fatahta it almost rhymes so it's very easy to remember anta fatahta so the ta bit is representing for me anta so again antuma will be represented very

easily by fatah tuma I hope you can probably now start guessing the rest of them very easily so antum will be fatahtum antum fatahtum and anti fatahti I hope and pray inshallah that this is all clear to you fatahtuma antuma fatahtuma okay it's the same as the feminine and masculine version fatah antumna is fatah if you guessed it already well done fatahtumna ana fatahtu nahnu fatahna so that's it that's your 14 conjugation the column below in highlighted yellow ish has the details of all the changes

and these suffixes that you see is exactly the same in every past tense al maadi perfect tense verb and these are the ones you need to recognise quick overview inshallah the the red ones represent as for us the doer who's actually doing the action it's a pronoun so you don't need to repeat the pronoun in arabic it is already there the purple is there to indicate that this is feminine it's just a sign of femininity and of course we have the extra alif which is on

this one and from number six onwards all of them have sukoon on the third root letter the conjugation of them is very quick and very fast and you can always see it in a rhythm so let me repeat one more time inshallah first i'm going to do it with the pronoun so sticks in your head then i'm going to do without the pronoun so i you can get rid of the pronoun because already there we can simply say that's your 14 i hope and pray you

write them slowly using the colouring system this one or something else you like so you can distinguish the parts and please note inshallah that the three root letters are there right throughout they remain in the order that they are and the bowing changes are i've already explained to you what they are most important is number one from which you can conjugate all the others once you've learned it well you can go backward forwards everywhere you can recognise one of them you can say that oh they

belong to this box therefore i can conjugate the rest from it and i can translate it correctly so my dear brothers and sisters this is the able exactly the same one with the suffixes that we have added to the verbs or to the roots i should say to form the 14 different sigas that we have number 1 to 14 i'm going to quickly repeat again i do apologise if it's too many repetition but make sure that you understand what's going on so the red bits are

representing the pronoun number one and number four there is nothing representing the pronoun the doer the pronoun is hidden in as far as the scale is concerned but you will translate as heat as who are here depending on the context that you are translating into number one and number four will cover later in more detail are the most important because after that there is a possibility of a noun coming as a doer as far as all of them there's already pronoun there otherwise number one and

number four could have a noun after the doer so this table inshallah was going to be made available to you i apologise i can't do it in youtube but i will be having a website very soon and i will put the link in the description i ask for your patience one of the reasons for delay of releasing these videos was that i just couldn't get the video website done on time as soon as it is ready you will find some of these notes inshallah especially these

forms and things which you need to practise with i will put them as soon as they're done it you will just look at the description inshallah and i'll put the link there as long as there's no issues on youtube to do that you'll find the website which is inshallah is on the first stages of being developed for lesson by lesson there will be some notes and things to help you a to practise b to revise and some of the forms and things that i'm sharing with

you which i'll be sharing with you inshallah on the on the link so please forgive me bear with me but in the meantime you can take a screenshot of this and rewrite it inshallah on your computer even by hand is perfect just as long as you're practising inshallah so in conclusion these are the suffixes you're going to see in every maadi verb at the end and you'll recognise the verb its siga where it is who the doer is from the ending i'm going to conjugate one

more for you inshallah just to show you that this how easy it is as long as you're following the steps you should be able to do that inshallah so now we have another verb that we're going to conjugate and just to show you that it's exactly the same step so instead of having fa ta ha we have noon saad and ra na sa ra na sa ra so how we're going to do that one so first is no sa ra na sa ra huma version will

be na sa ra with the alif at the end hum version na sa ru and alif at the end okay you can see that for protection exactly what we did in the previous one which will what should this one be try and guess before i write it na sa ra and we have the ta at the end which is your sign of femininity and then we have na sa ra and the huma is represented by the alif na sa ra ta and of course we have

hunna version which will be na sar and again from now on the third root letter will take a sukoon na sar na so let's quickly go na sa ra na sa ra na sa ru na sa rat na sa rata na sar na now we want to do the second person so anta will be remember the third root letter from now on is sukoon na sar ta and then we have na sar su ma and then we have na sar sum na sar for anti na

sar and then we have na sar su ma and na sar sun na so we have here na sar ta na sar tu ma na sar tum na sar ti na sar tu ma na sar tun na again all of them from number six onwards sukoon on the third root letter then we have here na sar tu na sar na so you can see alhamdulillah exactly the same as what we did previously and this is how you will conjugate every single maadi in the past tense

so brothers and sisters here is the full one you can take a screenshot of that if you like where the colours are also there inshallah i didn't put colours in the previous and it would taken me too long to type but you can see it very clearly here there is no difference between this one and the fatahah version that we did earlier now what i'd like you to do is conjugate exactly the same scale which you can see at the top the root letter means to

go somewhere nasara was to help this one to go so we have exactly the same principles as we had before let's quickly do this one i'm i've already done it i'm just going to show you what they are but please please make sure you practise fatahah nasara and dahaba so we have here first of all dahaba dahaba dahabu dahabat dahabata dahabna dahabta dahabtuma dahabtum dahabti dahabtuma dahabtuna dahabtu dahabna so you will see here inshallah ta'ala all the conjugation is exactly the same so you've got three

verbs fatahah nasara daraba every other verb that follows this scale of fa a'la will be 100% identical the only difference will be the three root letters once you learn to conjugate one you can conjugate a thousand very simple principle inshallah ta'ala alhamdulillah we've had an overview of the perfect tense verb we've also learned how to conjugate the maadi so we've done the these two steps of our lesson there are two more uh inshallah ta'ala and we will see in the second video inshallah the other points

i'm going to go detail into the maadi give you all the information that you need inshallah so that you learn it once and you don't have to learn it again and again provided you learn the practise the knowledge will be inside and then you can tackle advanced grammar it is where here i believe a lot of the time we skip through this we simply learn we memorise part of fashion which is good but then we don't understand what's going on and when we get to advanced

stuff we get stuck so if we do this slowly please forgive me the videos are long and quite tedious at times i apologise for that and i repeat that these videos are not there for some just watching for the sake of watching or even learning by watching is for you to interact with and therefore if i go slowly inshallah you can go very fast uh in your studies so the slower i go the better it is and i'm trying to keep a balance with the length

of the video please do give your feedback what's working and what's not and inshallah i will try to accommodate where possible so in the second part of the video inshallah ta'ala we're going to pick up uh on this one and we're going to pick up on the conjugation of samia and karuma we've done the other two so we're going to look at the middle root letter changing uh with dhamma and then afterwards inshallah in the following lesson we will go through the grammar rules where you

can start using uh this perfect tense again jazakumullah khairan for watching may allah subhanallah bless you with the very best in this world in the hereafter for your support and your continuous dua i look forward to seeing you in the next video do continue to like share subscribe and as well as give us feedback on what is working may allah subhanallah bless you with the very best in this world and in the hereafter assalamu alaikum