NOTE: the verb that is being used to illustrate is كتب     

 

The past tense has a Fat’ha on all three letters.  

 

Other verbs replace the Fat’ha on the middle letter with a Kasrah.

 

For these verbs, other rules apply.

 

There are also some verbs that have Fat’has on all the letters but the middle letter is ل “Lam”, these verbs follow the same rules for the past, but not the present when it comes to tashkeel.

 

1.  Past verb  (الفعل الماضي)

 

The simple masculine past tense of verbs are the roots of all words in Arabic. All Arabic verbs (all forms), nouns, and adjectives come from either a three-letter or four-letter-past tens verb.

 

Let’s take for example the noun كتاب meaning book.  The root of this word comes from the 3-letter-verb كتب meaning “he wrote”.  There are certain rules on how to form words based on simple past tens verbs. But here we concentrate on how to form verbs from verbs.

 

We will take the verb كتب as an example to illustrate how to form different verbs to express several situations based on time and the gender of speaker/listener

 

à   He wrote:           كتب     

This is the simple form which is the root. There is a Fat’ha on each letter (some verbs replace the Fat’ha on mid letter with a Kasrah)

 

à   She wrote:      كتبت      

In order to express a past action taken by a female, we add a ت “T” to the end of the verb. This ت is called تاء التأنيث الساكنة.  Which means the feminine Silent T.   It’s called silent because we have “sokoon” at the end of it.  In English one would read: KatabaT

The Small a indicates a Fat’ha and not an ا   “Alif”

 

à   I wrote:               كتبت

In order to express an action taken by you, you also add a ت to the end of the simple past verb but this time it’s not a silent ت.  In this case, we replace the Fat’ha on the last original letter with a Sokoon and we add a Dammah to the ت.   In English one would read:  KatabTo

The o at the end indicates a Dammah.

 

2.  present Verb (الفعل المضارع)

 

The second Tens of verbs is the Present. This is again formed by some changes to the past simple.

 

à   He is writing:     يكتب    

We take the simple past كتب and we add a ي to the beginning. Thisي  has a Fat’ha on it. We replace the Fat’ha on the first original letter with a Sokoon.  We also replace the Fat’has on the remaining 2 letters with Dammas. In English one would read:  Yak’ToBo

 

à   She is writing:    تكتب   

We take the simple past كتب  and we add a ت which has a Fat’ha on it to the beginning of the verb.  We replace the Fat’ha on the first original letter with a Sokoon.  We also replace the Fat’has on the remaining 2 letters with Dammas. In English one would read:  Tak’ToBo

 

à   I am writing:        أكتب   

We take the simple past كتب  and we add أ  “Hamzah” with a Fat’ha to the beginning. We replace the Fat’ha on the first original letter with a Sokoon.  We also replace the Fat’has on the remaining 2 letters with Dammas. In English one would read:  Ak’ToBo

 

NOTE:   if the verb has a ل in the middle, then when forming the present, we put a Kasrah under the ل.    E.g.      جلب    meaning he brought would become:

يجلب   YaG’LeBo

تجلب   TaG’LeBo

أجلب   AG’LeBo

 

 

قرأ ---- he Read                                 ذهب----he went

خرج--- he went out                           درس---he studied

زرع---he planted (grass)                  جلس---he sat

سحب---he pulled                               نظر---he looked

فتح --- he opened                              رسم--- he Drew