Arabic Grammar

[ali_fatheroforphans]

Salam,

I'm very keen to learn Arabic Grammar because I have holidays now (free time )

The benefit of learning Arabic grammer is that you'll be able to properly understand Quran when you recite the words inshallah and you'll appreciate it more. I'm planning to watch a series of lectures on the Medina Arabic book. The course is very popular and a lot of people apparently say that it has really improved their Arabic. The teacher is amazing judging from the lesson I watched.

You can find the resources (English key and worksheets) here ---> http://www.learnarabic.info/p/references.html?m=1

I thought I'll create this thread so users (those who are keen) can like update whenever they finish a lesson, in this way I'll stay motivated.

@Husayni

[Rohani]

wa salaam

except sometimes the reference to a haram song from him. I have a link to a telegram group that is teaching courses on quran vocab anyone who wants it pm me. 

Edited November 17, 2018 by Rohani

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

Salams

This is an excellent book series for anyone wishing to come out speaking Arabic (or Modern Standard and Classical Arabic) with a high intermediate proficiency. I do prefer the newer edition of the book in 7 (short) books rather than 3 (long) books plus supplementary materials (answer keys), it was a lot more difficult for a student studying on his own and the new edition is better if you're on your own: https://archive.org/details/DrV.AbdurRahim.MadinahArabicReader

 

Other books I like, have used myself, or have considered teaching with:

• Ebrahim Muhammad's From the Treasures of Arabic Morphology -- A text primarily dedicated to teaching Classical Arabic's verbal morphology (though it does contain essential information on nominal morphology). It's a good a as any as a first text.
• Schulz, Krahl and Reuschel's Standard Arabic: an elementary-intermediate course (Cambridge) -- Keep in mind that this text is a bit dense but very thorough and filled with helpful exercises and a lot of vocabulary. The course has a focus on teaching Modern Standard Arabic (though any good book teaching MSA will teach you Classical as well), the final reading is from a classical grammatical text from the medieval period.
• Wightwick and Gaafar's Arabic Verb Tenses (McGraw Hill) -- This only concerns itself with you learning MSA, but it'll teach you verbs very well. There's two other works on Arabic vocabulary and on pronouns and prepositions that are also good but this is the best between them.
• Alan Jone's Arabic through the Qur'an -- An excellent work that'll teach you enough to be able to read the Qur'an (and the hadith though with a dictionary at hand for that) I'm not a fan of how idiomatic his translations can be but he does teach you to translate with style.
• Wheeler Thackston's Koranic and Classical Arabic (Ibex) -- This is one of my favourite works, it'll teach you Arabic thoroughly and is good to learn Arabic for the first time or to review and consolidate what you've learned. This text also concerns itself primarily with Classical Arabic with a small reader at the end. However it is very heavy on the English grammatical terms (like enclitic, hallow verbs, substantive, etc.) so this might seem intimidating. If you are able to get past that (looking at examples, looking up what the word means, or googling the concept tends to be enough if you're really stuck) then it is a rewarding text. He also has an excellent grammar for Farsi and for Classical Syriac (and two excellent ones found online for Sorani and Kurmanji Kurdish).
• Sayyid Muhammad-Reza Tabatabai's Sarf-e Sadeh -- This work is concerned with teaching Arabic morphology (the section on the morphology of verbs is in Farsi and the section of morphology of nouns is in Arabic), it's both an excellent study text and reference grammar, you should study it with the associated workbook that's also been published. Probably the best work to develop a very strong understanding of Classical Arabic morphology.
• Tashil al-Nahw -- Despite the Arabic name it is, in fact, written in English. It's a book best suited for reviewing syntax (nahw) of classical Arabic after you've learned it once or for study with a teacher. And this should probably be used in tandem with or after studying something like Tuhfah al-Sanniyya.
• A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language, by Haywoord and Nahmad. A beautifully written text which will give you a solid understanding of MSA and a good foundation for reading Classical texts. I'd recommend using this text with a teacher or using it to consolidate what you've learned if you're on your own.

Some Arabic Grammars written in Arabic:

• Shadha al-Urf -- An Arabic guide to morphology (sarf).
• al-Hidayah fi l-Nahw -- An Arabic guide to syntax (nahw), in my opinion the best edition is Hasan Shirafkan's which I believe is commonly used in Qom these days. 
• Tuhfah al-Saniyya fi Sharh Muqaddimah al-Ajurumiyya -- A beginner to intermediate grammar, this will give you an excellent understanding of how Arabic syntax works.

Some Arabic Reference Grammars in English:

• Joyce Akesson's The Basics and Intricacies of Arabic Morphology -- Don't let the name fool you, this text isn't a student grammar but a reference grammar of Arabic morphology.
• Ali Abdul-Rasheed's al-Mujaz fi l-Tasrif -- The name might be Arabic but this text is written in good English, it's an excellent reference work for both the morphology of verbs and nouns, and you'd do well to use it when studying Sarf-e Sadeh. 
• Wright's Arabic Grammar -- A classic text which in my opinion hasn't been surpassed
• Fischer's A Grammar of Classical Arabic -- Originally written in German and demonstrates German diligence, it's an excellent grammar and a text also yet to be surpassed.
• Brill's Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics -- This is an encyclopedia and needs to be understood as that, not as a text to learn Arabic using.

Some advance study texts and reference grammars written in Arabic:

• Sharh Qatr al-Nida wa Bal al-Sada
• Sharh ibn Aqeel ala l-Alfiya -- Arguably the most important commentary on the al-Alfiya of Malik.
• Sharh al-Suyuti ala l-Alfiya
• Sharh al-Ashmuni ala l-Alfiya
• Sharh al-Shatibi ala l-Alfiya
• Mughni al-Labib -- It also has a summarized and Shia-fied version known as Mughni al-Adib (poetry is replaced with hadiths and quotes from Nahjul Balagha).
• Rawdhah al-Bahiyyah
• Sibawayh's al-Kitab -- Written by the founder of the Basran school of Arabic grammar and one of the most major grammarians in the history of the Arabic language.
• al-Astarabadi's Sharh al-Shafiya -- One of the most important reference works on morphology.
• al-Astarabadi's Sharh al-Kafiya -- One of the most important reference works on Nahw. This and the previous one give a near complete and exhaustive treatment of their respective subjects.
• Majmu'ah al-Sarf wa l-Nahw wa l-I'rab -- An Arabic encyclopedia of Arabic grammar.
• Mu'jam Tasrif al-Af'al al-Arabiyyah -- An amazing work written by a Lebanese Christian conjugating hundreds of different types and categories of verbs, it's an excellent reference (there's an English equivalent known as Barron's 501 Arabic Verbs I saw in a bookstore once, though didn't buy since it's not nearly as good as this Arabic work). 

Readers and Annotated Works to be used to help start reading Arabic:

• Munther A. Younes's Tales from Kalilah wa Dimna -- It's a graded reader which initially alters the stories but the final ones presented are unaltered. He annotates it rather than translating it and asks you comprehension questions after the stories.
• David DiMeo's The Travels of Ibn Battuta: A Guided Arabic Reader -- This is an excellent reader which presents the stories (unaltered I believe) with annotations and a bunch of comprehension and reflection questions afterwards to be answered in Arabic and English.
• Bonebacker and Fishebein's A Reader of Classical Arabic Literature -- This is an annotated Arabic reader presenting unaltered Arabic reading passages from a variety of classical Arabic texts. This will absolutely help develop your reading skills.
• Arthur Arberry's Arabic Poetry: a primer for students -- This is a text written by one of the best translators of the Qur'an, he collected an excellent anthology of poems in classical Arabic from various authors. This book presents the Arabic text on the right-hand page and the English translation on the left-hand page with annotations at the bottom, largely concerned with the poem's style.
• Alan Jones' Early Arabic Poetry -- A text which similarly presents an anthology of poems from various poets and translates them annotating the text and explaining difficult vocab as well as explaining the style of the poetry.

Finally, Arabic dictionaries:

• Hans Wehr's Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic -- This is an absolutely classic work every student ought to have a physical copy of. It's written primarily for MSA but you can get away with using it for Classical Arabic.
• Edward Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon -- Another classic work that every serious student hopes to own (though the price tends to be eye-watering), this is a work written specifically for Classical Arabic and was written in reference to Classical Arabic dictionaries.
• Badawi and Abdel-Haleem's Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur'anic Usage (Brill) -- A more recent publication but it is, nevertheless, an excellent tool for the Arabic student.

The above works will likely all be found online. You obviously don't need to read all or even most of them, and depending on what your aims are many aren't pertinent, however these are all excellent tools to aid you in your study of Arabic. You'd also do well when you're starting off to use an spaced repetition based system of vocabulary acquisition, Anki is a very good app you can use for Arabic (and any other language you chose to learn afterwards). The best thing to do even as a beginner is to jump into the ocean that is Arabic and read anything, even if most of it goes over your head it'll still help you reinforce what you're learning and remind you why you're learning it. And the more advanced you get, you want to read Shi'i Hadith, Fiqh, and theology works less because they tend to be highly idiosyncratic, idiomatic, and formulaic, and generally refer to history, literature, and early and Sunni Hadith works since they tend to be the least idiosyncratic, idiomatic, and formulaic. As the hadith says: "Whosoever treads a path seeking therein knowledge, God shall make him tread a path towards Eden. The angels surely place their wings before the seeeker of knowledge and are pleased with him. Whoever is in the heavens and on the earths prays for forgiveness for the seeker of knowledge, even the whale in the sea." (من سلك طريقا يطلب فيه علما سلك الله به طريقا إلى الجنة وإن الملائكة لتضع أجنحتها لطالب العلم رضا به وإنه يستغفر لطالب العلم من في السماء ومن في الأرض حتى الحوت في البحر).

Good luck and خسته نباشى.

Salams

Edited December 12, 2018 by Ibn Al-Ja'abi

[ali_fatheroforphans]

@Ibn Al-Ja'abi woah brother, thanks for providing me so many resources, looking forward to learning Arabic.

Did you have a teacher who helped you with Arabic grammar? 

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

41 minutes ago, ali_fatheroforphans said:

@Ibn Al-Ja'abi woah brother, thanks for providing me so many resources, looking forward to learning Arabic.

Did you have a teacher who helped you with Arabic grammar? 

No I started in late highschool using some of the books I recommended and studied largely on my own except for tuhfah al-sanniyya which I studied in mubahathāt over the course of a few months last year with a friend who'd done it before. It's very possible to study Arabic on your own and be successful (if I am, surely other people are though), it's a war of attrition, as a friend put it.

[Shaykh Maytham]

Salaam for anyone interested https://telegram.me/mafaheemenglish

[AStruggler]

Salaam brother @ali_fatheroforphans

How’s the progress going?

[AStruggler]

On 11/17/2018 at 5:13 PM, Ibn Al-Ja'abi said:

This is an excellent book series for anyone wishing to come out speaking Arabic (or Modern Standard and Classical Arabic) with a high intermediate proficiency.

Salaam Brother @Ibn Al-Ja'abi, so this Madina course teaches both MSA and classical Arabic? From the quick google searches I’ve done Arabic is divided into 3 categories, there is Classical Arabic, MSA, and then there are the dialects. So from what I found, MSA is really close to the classical version of Arabic but it’s like a modern version of it like the name says lol. So, does this Madina course focus more on one, classical or modern standard, or does it really make a learner proficient at both? 

Also, I read that it’s better to learn MSA first then classical? Is this true? Because MSA is easier and after learning it it’d be easy to learn classical...

Edited December 12, 2018 by AStruggler

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

46 minutes ago, AStruggler said:

Salaam Brother, so this Madina course teaches both MSA and classical Arabic? From the quick google searches I’ve done Arabic today is divided into 3 categories, there is Classical Arabic, MSA, and then there are the dialects. So from what I found, MSA is really close to the classical version of Arabic but it’s like a modern version of it like the name says lol. So, does Madina course focus more on one, classical or modern standard, or does it really makes a learner proficient at both? 

Salams,

From what I remember the Madina course is more focused on MSA. That being said it is still very good. You are right that MSA is very similar to classical Arabic in that it tries to maintain as much Classical vocabulary as possible and employs grammatical categories from Classical Arabic which are otherwise phased out in dialects (e.g. duality). Any book teaching MSA worth its salt would give you a solid foundation for Classical Arabic, however you need to keep in mind there are differences. MSA repurposed a lot of vocabulary from classical Arabic in order to avoid importing vocabulary from foreign languages (which does still happen). So you ended up having shura become a parliament rather than a council which elects a Caliph, and the example I always like to give is that Ja'far al-Tayyar ends up becoming Ja'far the pilot rather than Ja'far the winged. There is also a somewhat more simplified sentence structure. You also have a lot of archaic vocabulary in Classical Arabic which doesn't show up in MSA. Overall, if you know MSA well you'll be able to read a Classical Arabic text as long as you have a dictionary near by to look up archaic words and can stand what can be rather baroque sentences at times. You should think of it like a reasonably educated English speaker trying to read English texts written between 1600-1900, you'll be able to especially with practice. I've also added another book (New Arabic Grammar by Haywoord and Nahmad) to the list that I discovered recently, it's a book designed to teach MSA but is incredibly useful for giving you a solid foundation for approaching classical Arabic.

Edited December 12, 2018 by Ibn Al-Ja'abi

[AStruggler]

18 minutes ago, Ibn Al-Ja'abi said:

Salams,

From what I remember the Madina course is more focused on MSA. That being said it is still very good. You are right that MSA is very similar to classical Arabic in that it tries to maintain as much Classical vocabulary as possible and employs grammatical categories from Classical Arabic which are otherwise phased out in dialects (e.g. duality). Any book teaching MSA worth its salt would give you a solid foundation for Classical Arabic, however you need to keep in mind there are differences. MSA repurposed a lot of vocabulary from classical Arabic in order to avoid importing vocabulary from foreign languages (which does still happen). So you ended up having shura become a parliament rather than a council which elects a Caliph, and the example I always like to give is that Ja'far al-Tayyar ends up becoming Ja'far the pilot rather than Ja'far the winged. There is also a somewhat more simplified sentence structure. You also have a lot of archaic vocabulary in Classical Arabic which doesn't show up in MSA. Overall, if you know MSA well you'll be able to read a Classical Arabic text as long as you have a dictionary near by to look up archaic words and can stand what can be rather baroque sentences at times. You should think of it like a reasonably educated English speaker trying to read English texts written between 1600-1900, you'll be able to especially with practice. I've also added another book (New Arabic Grammar by Haywoord and Nahmad) to the list that I discovered recently, it's a book designed to teach MSA but is incredibly useful for giving you a solid foundation for approaching classical Arabic.

I see, thank you!

[ali_fatheroforphans]

On 12/11/2018 at 7:45 PM, AStruggler said:

Salaam brother @ali_fatheroforphans

How’s the progress going?

I'm up to lesson 4 so far - I've memorized all the vocab of the lessons up till now.

If your planning to learn Arabic Grammar too, use the newer Medina book which @Ibn Al-Ja'abi posted - the pictures help a lot.

But yeah, I'm busy with work so don't have that much time as I would've liked. Regardless, you need motivation man, like everyday you need to study Arabic (even if it's for 10-15 min), otherwise you'll go rusty.

[AStruggler]

On 12/12/2018 at 3:40 AM, ali_fatheroforphans said:

I'm up to lesson 4 so far - I've memorized all the vocab of the lessons up till now.

If your planning to learn Arabic Grammar too, use the newer Medina book which @Ibn Al-Ja'abi posted - the pictures help a lot.

But yeah, I'm busy with work so don't have that much time as I would've liked. Regardless, you need motivation man, like everyday you need to study Arabic (even if it's for 10-15 min), otherwise you'll go rusty.

Wow that’s good. I have some things I’m busy with rn but yeah I really hope to learn in some time iA, hopefully soon. 

[gajarkahalva]

On 11/17/2018 at 5:13 PM, Ibn Al-Ja'abi said:

Salams

....

Any chance you can give a link to some of the online material like the Readers? I've searched online but none of them are available to download for free apart from the Kalilah wa Dimna (which looks like it is all in Arabic - I was hoping for an Arabic English book)

Edited December 13, 2018 by Ibn Al-Ja'abi
Reduce size of quote

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

11 hours ago, gajarkahalva said:

Any chance you can give a link to some of the online material like the Readers? I've searched online but none of them are available to download for free apart from the Kalilah wa Dimna (which looks like it is all in Arabic - I was hoping for an Arabic English book)

Salams,

Here's a link to the Ibn Battuta one. You can also find these MSA readers to download from Library Genesis: Routledge's reader for advanced Modern Standard and a reader for elementary MSA. These are alright, nothing to write home about though. There's also a reader for Classical Arabic, but it's a bit old school, I prefer the Classical Arabic reader I recommend, however this isn't the worst thing you could use, don't like how the annotations are done. Then there's Chaim Rabin's reader which is on archive.org. I do like this reader, it's a good introduction to various pieces of literature in MSA and gives you a good variety of passages to read.

Unfortunately the Kalila wa Dimna reader doesn't seem to be online. It also is an annotated reader as opposed to a bilingual reader. I personally am a fan of annotated readers wherein you can translate the text yourself with new or difficult vocabulary or phrases being noted by the author, you'll also get a feel of reading books on your own this way. You also need to see if the translations in Bilingual readers are literal or more stylized, for a reader you'd want a more literal rendering of the sentence.

[gajarkahalva]

10 hours ago, Ibn Al-Ja'abi said:

Salams,

Here's a link to the Ibn Battuta one. You can also find these MSA readers to download from Library Genesis: Routledge's reader for advanced Modern Standard and a reader for elementary MSA. These are alright, nothing to write home about though. There's also a reader for Classical Arabic, but it's a bit old school, I prefer the Classical Arabic reader I recommend, however this isn't the worst thing you could use, don't like how the annotations are done. Then there's Chaim Rabin's reader which is on archive.org. I do like this reader, it's a good introduction to various pieces of literature in MSA and gives you a good variety of passages to read.

Unfortunately the Kalila wa Dimna reader doesn't seem to be online. It also is an annotated reader as opposed to a bilingual reader. I personally am a fan of annotated readers wherein you can translate the text yourself with new or difficult vocabulary or phrases being noted by the author, you'll also get a feel of reading books on your own this way. You also need to see if the translations in Bilingual readers are literal or more stylized, for a reader you'd want a more literal rendering of the sentence.

Jazakallah Khair for this. Really appreciate the time you took to give me the links. 

[Haji 2003]

On 11/17/2018 at 10:13 PM, Ibn Al-Ja'abi said:

Wightwick and Gaafar's Arabic Verb Tenses (McGraw Hill) -- This only concerns itself with you learning MSA, but it'll teach you verbs very well. There's two other works on Arabic vocabulary and on pronouns and prepositions that are also good but this is the best between them.

Thanks just pre-ordered the 2nd edition of this, out on 1st Feb 2019.

[Don'tMakeAس]

@Ibn Al-Ja'abi what do you think of the al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya textbooks that are typically used in introductory Arabic classrooms? Are they outdated? I noticed you didn't mention them in your list.

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

On 1/2/2019 at 12:19 PM, Don'tMakeA١٠١س said:

@Ibn Al-Ja'abi what do you think of the al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya textbooks that are typically used in introductory Arabic classrooms? Are they outdated? I noticed you didn't mention them in your list.

Salams,

The books I mentioned are ones I've used or examined myself in depth. I have seen the second volume of al-Kitaab and it's an alright book, but it's scope is to teach you the Arabic of educated Egyptians. It's great for what it is but my recommendations cover books on Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic.

On 1/2/2019 at 10:51 AM, Haji 2003 said:

Thanks just pre-ordered the 2nd edition of this, out on 1st Feb 2019.

Good luck, InshaAllah. You can do really well with this book.

Wassalam

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

On 1/2/2019 at 11:51 AM, Haji 2003 said:

Thanks just pre-ordered the 2nd edition of this, out on 1st Feb 2019.

Salams,

Was wondering how you've found it if you've received it and started using it yet. 

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

On 12/13/2018 at 1:34 PM, gajarkahalva said:

Jazakallah Khair for this. Really appreciate the time you took to give me the links. 

I'd like to post an update, I did find the Kalila wa Dimna reader. This is an excellent book, give it a try.

[Haji 2003]

Thanks for your post. I am using it to shame Maryam into using the book and then writing up her experience of it. She says it's similar to the French one she has in the same series. More details from her later.

[Ibn Al-Ja'abi]

4 hours ago, Haji 2003 said:

Thanks for your post. I am using it to shame Maryam into using the book and then writing up her experience of it. She says it's similar to the French one she has in the same series. More details from her later.

Yes, this is one of the few books which teaches Arabic in more appropriate modern pedagogical ways. I've always thought books like this should be written especially for classical Arabic seeing how hawza students lose hair trying to figure out theoretical Arabic rules and learn Arabic at the same time. It's best, as far as I'm concerned, to teach someone to speak, read, and write Arabic to an intermediate competency and after that introduce them to the complexities of Arabic grammar and its theoretical discussions. I think there is one institution that teaches Arabic like this (though they've moved out of Qom now). Nevertheless, this is very much a book for teaching Modern Standard Arabic but I believe it should give you a very good foundation for working in Classical Arabic (since all the verbs of MSA are found in CA, but CA has 6 extra verb stems (ix and xi-xv) not found in MSA dealing basically with verbs of colour and defects -- clearly very rare things). 

If you want to move onto the next level of high intermediate (on the verge of being an advanced learner), check out Haywood and Nahmad. Their grammar is more expensive and the answer key is sold separately but you will have an unparalleled competency in Arabic if you do that work after this one. It'll allow you to have a good foundation for CA and MSA both.

Tell me how you guys find it when you start using it. Very eager to hear other's feedback, I feel like I always sing praises of Arabic Verb Tenses and want to see how justified I am in it lol.

[HabibZaatar]

Would recommend library.net to find any book you need in Arabic 

Edited July 11, 2020 by starlight
Reduced font size

[guest 2025]

Just about to start Book 3, pray for me please. And if you have any advice, do share!

[guest 2025]

https://muslimcentral.com/series/bilal-ismail-explanation-of-madinah-arabic-book-3/

This teacher is fantastic