Arabic Grammar Basics: How the Rules Fit Together

Arabic grammar sorts every word into three classes, the noun اسم (ism), the verb فعل (fiʿl) and the particle حرف (ḥarf), and builds two kinds of sentence: nominal, which starts with a noun and needs no present-tense "to be", and verbal, which starts with a verb. Every other rule hangs off those five.

The spoken dialects kept most of that structure and dropped most of the endings, so every rule below carries a verdict for Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf Arabic. You can see at a glance which ones you will actually hear.

Transliteration follows our conjugation and pronoun pages: ā ī ū for long vowels, a dot under the emphatics (ḥ ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ), ʿ for ayn, ʾ for hamza. Dialect forms add ē and ō, as in bēt, house. MSA means Modern Standard Arabic.

On this page

1. The Arabic grammar map
2. Every rule, and what the dialects did with it
3. The two sentence types: nominal and verbal
4. Nouns: gender, the article, iḍāfa and the endings
5. Arabic plurals: sound, broken and dual
6. Arabic adjectives and agreement
7. Verbs and particles
8. What to learn first, and what only to recognise
9. Where to go next

The Arabic grammar map

Every Arabic grammar rule belongs to one of three word classes or two sentence types. The map puts the classes at the top, shows which sentence type each opens, and marks each rule with what Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf speech did with it.

A particle never opens a sentence of its own; it works inside both types. Arabic grammar counts pronouns, adjectives and numbers as nouns, which is why the noun panel is so long.

Of the 19 rules, only 2 are gone from everyday Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf speech, and both are endings: case and tanwīn. Ten survived with changes. Seven survived untouched: the definite article, gender, sound and broken plurals, adjective agreement, iḍāfa, the verb forms and the sentence with no "is".

Every rule, and what the dialects did with it

The table is the same map in text: 19 Arabic grammar rules, each with an MSA example and a verdict for Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf Arabic. The dialects kept the structure and shed the endings: the case vowels, tanwīn, the verb moods, and the dual and feminine plural verbs.

Sources for the dialect columns, beyond our spoke pages: Kristen Brustad's The Syntax of Spoken Arabic (Georgetown University Press, 2000) for plural agreement in Cairo and Kuwait, and Maria Persson's study of the Gulf b- prefix as a future and irrealis marker. "Gulf" means the shared coastal core; Gulf Arabic, from Kuwait to the Emirates covers local differences, and Levantine Arabic across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine does the same for the Levant.

The two sentence types: nominal and verbal

Arabic sentence structure comes down to the first word. A sentence that opens with a noun is nominal, جملة اسمية (jumla ismiyya, noun sentence); one that opens with a verb is verbal, جملة فعلية (jumla fiʿliyya, verb sentence).

The nominal sentence has no "is"

A nominal sentence is a subject, the مبتدأ (mubtadaʾ), and a predicate, the خبر (khabar), with nothing between them. البَيْتُ كَبِيرٌ (al-baytu kabīrun) is "the house is big", word for word "the house big". The verb "to be", كَانَ (kāna), appears in the past and future, not in the plain present.

Definiteness is what makes it a sentence. البَيْتُ الكَبِيرُ (al-baytu l-kabīru), both words definite, is only a phrase, "the big house". Drop the second al- and it becomes a statement. When the subject is indefinite, it moves to the end: فِي البَيْتِ رَجُلٌ (fī l-bayti rajulun), there is a man in the house. Every dialect on the map kept the nominal sentence, minus the endings: Egyptian il-bēt kibīr, Levantine il-bēt kbīr.

The verbal sentence puts the verb first

Formal Arabic prefers verb, subject, object: كَتَبَ الطَّالِبُ الدَّرْسَ (kataba ṭ-ṭālibu d-darsa), the student wrote the lesson. The trap is agreement. A verb before its subject agrees in gender but stays singular, so ذَهَبَ الطُّلَّابُ (dhahaba ṭ-ṭullābu) is "the students went" with a singular verb. Put the subject first and the verb takes the plural: الطُّلَّابُ ذَهَبُوا (aṭ-ṭullābu dhahabū). Gender still counts before the subject: ذَهَبَتِ الطَّالِبَاتُ (dhahabati ṭ-ṭālibātu), the female students went.

Speech runs the other way. Subject first is the everyday order in Cairo, Beirut and Kuwait, so the verb is plural: Egyptian iṭ-ṭalaba rāḥu, Gulf iṭ-ṭullāb rāḥaw. So the MSA rule still holds in speech; speakers just put the subject first almost every time.

Nouns: gender, the article, iḍāfa and the endings

Most of Arabic grammar is noun grammar. Every noun has a gender, a number and a state, definite or indefinite, and in MSA a case. Any word that describes a noun has to match it.

Gender and the definite article

Arabic has two genders and no neuter. Most feminine nouns end in ة (tāʾ marbūṭa), said -a: مَدْرَسَة (madrasa, school). A few are feminine with no marker, like شَمْس (shams, sun). The article الـ (al-, the) never changes for gender or number. Its l blends into the 14 "sun letters", made with the tip of the tongue, so الشَّمْس is ash-shams. Before the 14 "moon letters" it stays: القَمَر (al-qamar, the moon). The dialects kept all of this, with il- for al-.

Iḍāfa: how Arabic says "of"

Iḍāfa (often written idafa), إضافة (iḍāfa, addition), joins two nouns into one phrase: بَابُ البَيْتِ (bābu l-bayti), the door of the house. The first noun never takes al- or tanwīn, though the phrase means "the door", and the second goes into the genitive. Chains can run longer: بَابُ بَيْتِ المُدِيرِ (bābu bayti l-mudīri), the door of the director's house. Learn iḍāfa to speaking level early. Egyptian bitāʿ, Levantine tabaʿ and Gulf māl add a second way to say "of", but plain bāb il-bēt is still everyday speech in all three.

Case endings and tanwīn

MSA marks a noun's job with a final short vowel: -u for the subject, -a for the object, -i after a preposition or in the second half of an iḍāfa. An indefinite noun adds an n sound, which is tanwīn: كِتَابٌ (kitābun), كِتَابًا (kitāban), كِتَابٍ (kitābin) ("a book"). The whole system is called إعراب (iʿrāb).

No spoken dialect on this map uses it. Egyptian Arabic, which drops case endings entirely, says il-walad whatever the boy is doing, and so do Levantine and coastal Gulf speech. Tanwīn survives only in fixed words like شُكْرًا (shukran, thank you). The one real holdout is Najdi Arabic in central Saudi Arabia, which still uses an -in ending in some positions.

Numbers and counted nouns

One to ten in MSA is واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، أربعة، خمسة، ستة، سبعة، ثمانية، تسعة، عشرة (wāḥid, ithnān, thalātha, arbaʿa, khamsa, sitta, sabʿa, thamāniya, tisʿa, ʿashara). From 3 to 10 the number takes the opposite gender to the singular noun, which goes plural: ثَلَاثَةُ كُتُبٍ (thalāthatu kutubin, three books) but ثَلَاثُ بَنَاتٍ (thalāthu banātin, three girls). From 11 up the noun is singular again: عِشْرُونَ كِتَابًا (ʿishrūna kitāban, twenty books). Egyptian drops the gender switch: talat kutub, talat banāt. Our chart of Arabic numbers from 1 to 100 has the full list with both numeral systems.

Arabic plurals: sound, broken and dual

Arabic has three numbers, singular, dual and plural, and two ways to make a plural. Sound plurals add an ending. Broken plurals, used by most nouns, rebuild the word on a new pattern, the way English turns man into men.

No rule predicts a broken plural from the singular, so learn each noun with its plural; in Anki, put both on one card. A plural that does not refer to people takes feminine singular agreement, so الكُتُبُ جَدِيدَةٌ (al-kutubu jadīdatun), the books are new, uses a feminine singular adjective. The dialects kept broken plurals intact and simplified the rest. The sound masculine plural is always -īn (Egyptian mudarrisīn), the dual lives on nouns only (kitabēn, two books), and in Cairo and Kuwait an inanimate plural sometimes takes plural agreement where MSA would insist on the feminine singular.

Arabic adjectives and agreement

An Arabic adjective comes after its noun and matches it in gender, number and definiteness, and in MSA in case as well. بَيْتٌ كَبِيرٌ (baytun kabīrun) is a big house; البَيْتُ الكَبِيرُ (al-baytu l-kabīru) is the big house, with al- on both words.

A feminine noun takes the feminine adjective: مَدْرَسَةٌ كَبِيرَةٌ (madrasatun kabīratun, a big school). People in the plural take a plural adjective, often broken itself: رِجَالٌ كِبَارٌ (rijālun kibārun, big men). Things in the plural take the feminine singular: بُيُوتٌ كَبِيرَةٌ (buyūtun kabīratun, big houses). And two of something take a dual adjective: الوَلَدَانِ الصَّغِيرَانِ (al-waladāni ṣ-ṣaghīrāni, the two small boys).

The comparative is one pattern, afʿal, and does not change for gender: أَكْبَرُ (akbaru, bigger or older), from kabīr. Colours share the shape but have a feminine: أَحْمَرُ / حَمْرَاءُ (aḥmaru / ḥamrāʾu, red).

The dialects kept gender, number and definiteness agreement and lost only the case: Egyptian il-bēt il-kibīr, Levantine il-bēt il-kbīr. Almost none of it changes between the textbook and a conversation in Cairo, so time spent here pays back fast.

Verbs and particles

An Arabic verb carries its subject's person, number and gender on the word itself, and the particles in front of it decide which ending it takes. That is why a separate subject pronoun is usually unnecessary, and why لَمْ (lam, did not) changes the verb after it.

Conjugation and the ten verb forms

Every verb is a root, usually three consonants, set into a pattern. The past adds suffixes: كَتَبْتُ (katabtu, I wrote). The present adds a prefix and usually an ending: يَكْتُبُ (yaktubu, he writes). MSA has 13 person forms per tense; Egyptian and Levantine have 8. The root then runs through up to ten derived patterns, Forms I to X: دَرَسَ (darasa) is "to study", and Form II دَرَّسَ (darrasa) is "to teach".

In speech, Egyptian and Levantine put b- on an ordinary present: biyiktib, byiktob. In the Gulf, yiktib already means "he writes", and b- marks the future or an intention, so baktib is "I'll write". For the future, MSA uses سَـ (sa-), Egyptian ḥa- and Levantine رح (raḥ).

Pronouns

Arabic has 12 personal pronouns, each with a free-standing form and a suffix: هُوَ (huwa, he) and ـهُ (-hu, his or him), as in كِتَابُهُ (kitābuhu, his book). The dialects use 8 of the 12. In Kuwait and much of the Gulf, "you" to a woman takes -ich: شلونچ (shlōnich, how are you, to a woman).

Prepositions, inna, kāna and negation

Particles, حروف (ḥurūf), never change shape. Prepositions put the next noun in the genitive: فِي البَيْتِ (fī l-bayti), in the house. The "17 prepositions in Arabic" people search for are the traditional school list of حروف الجر (ḥurūf al-jarr, the genitive particles): مِن، إلى، عَن، على، في، بِـ، لِـ، كَـ، حتى، مُنذ، مُذ، رُبَّ، وَ، تَ، خلا، عدا، حاشا (min, ilā, ʿan, ʿalā, fī, bi-, li-, ka-, ḥattā, mundhu, mudh, rubba, wa-, ta-, khalā, ʿadā, ḥāshā). Longer classical lists reach 20 by adding kay, laʿalla and matā. The first nine carry nearly all everyday use; the last three are exception words from classical texts. Our full list of Arabic prepositions with their case and pronoun forms has an example for each.

إِنَّ (inna) and her sisters sit in front of a nominal sentence and put its subject in the accusative: إِنَّ الدَّرْسَ سَهْلٌ (inna d-darsa sahlun), the lesson is indeed easy. The sisters are أَنَّ (anna, that), لٰكِنَّ (lākinna, but), كَأَنَّ (kaʾanna, as if), لَيْتَ (layta, if only) and لَعَلَّ (laʿalla, perhaps).

كَانَ (kāna) and her sisters are verbs that put the predicate in the accusative instead: كَانَ البَيْتُ كَبِيرًا (kāna l-baytu kabīran), the house was big. The sisters include صَارَ (ṣāra, became) and لَيْسَ (laysa, is not). Speech keeps the words and drops the case effect: Levantine inno means "that", and kān is the past of "to be" everywhere.

MSA picks a negator by tense, and each one changes the verb's ending.

What to learn first, and what only to recognise

Learn to produce the rules the dialects kept, and to recognise the ones they dropped. That split, read straight off the map, is the most useful study decision on this page, and the one I got wrong.

I learned from A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language with a tutor over Skype, doing every exercise and reviewing it at the next lesson; our review covers the grammar we worked through cover to cover. It made me very good at grammar and translation. It did nothing for my listening or speaking, which I should have practised alongside. And it taught all 13 verb persons and the full case system at equal weight, with no hint that some of those forms never come up in conversation.

Produce these from the first month:

• the definite article and the sun letters
• gender and noun-adjective agreement
• iḍāfa
• the nominal sentence with no "is"
• pronoun suffixes on nouns, verbs and prepositions
• past and present conjugation in the 8 persons speech uses
• negation with mā

Recognise these, and produce them only in writing:

• case endings and tanwīn
• the dual and feminine plural verbs and pronouns
• the subjunctive and jussive endings
• the case effects of inna and kāna
• lam and lan

You still have to learn the second list. You need case endings to read the Quran aloud, and lam to read a newspaper, since it is the normal written "did not". You just do not need to produce them in real time before you can hold a conversation.

Our second judgement is about courses: a conversation course with grammar scattered through it does not replace a grammar book. Al-Arabiyyah Bayna Yadayk improved my speaking and listening more than anything else I used, but it barely explains the grammar in its dialogues, so without a grammar background you need a tutor or the answer key. My university certificate, built on Al-Kitaab, taught me nothing new about grammar, and its explanations were thin. Pair one conversation course with one grammar book.

Once the map makes sense, move on to graded stories to practise parsing real sentences: find the subject and predicate of each sentence, then mark every iḍāfa.

Where to go next

Start with verbs if you are building sentences, or with the diacritics if you still read vowelled text.

• Conjugating one verb through every person and tense, with Egyptian and Levantine forms and the ten verb forms.
• The full pronoun and suffix grid, for all 12 persons and the 8 that speech keeps.
• Every common preposition and the genitive it triggers, including the irregular pronoun forms such as إِلَيَّ (ilayya, to me).
• The short-vowel marks that carry case endings, all shown on one letter.
• The grammar textbooks we rate, if you want the whole system in one book.

Frequently asked questions

What are the basics of Arabic grammar?

Arabic sorts every word into three classes: the noun (ism), the verb (fiʿl) and the particle (ḥarf). A sentence that starts with a noun is nominal and needs no present-tense verb 'to be'; one that starts with a verb is verbal. On top of that sit gender, the dual and plural, agreement between a noun and its adjective, the iḍāfa construction for 'of', and, in Modern Standard Arabic, three case endings.

What are the 17 prepositions in Arabic?

The traditional school list of ḥurūf al-jarr has 17: min, ilā, ʿan, ʿalā, fī, bi-, li-, ka-, ḥattā, mundhu, mudh, rubba, the oath particles wa- and ta-, and the exception words khalā, ʿadā and ḥāshā. Longer classical lists reach 20 by adding kay, laʿalla and matā. The first nine, from min to ḥattā, carry almost all everyday use, and every one puts the next noun in the genitive.

Do Arabic dialects use the same grammar as Modern Standard Arabic?

They keep the structure and drop the endings. Egyptian, Levantine and Gulf Arabic all keep gender, the definite article, noun-adjective agreement, iḍāfa and the sentence with no present-tense 'is'. None of them uses case endings or tanwīn, and all of them dropped the dual and feminine plural verbs, which cuts 13 verb persons to 8 in Egyptian and Levantine.

What is the difference between a nominal and a verbal sentence in Arabic?

A nominal sentence starts with a noun and links a subject to a predicate with no verb in the present: al-baytu kabīrun, the house is big. A verbal sentence starts with a verb, and in formal Arabic the verb stays singular before a plural subject: dhahaba ṭ-ṭullābu, the students went. Put the subject first and the verb becomes plural: aṭ-ṭullābu dhahabū.

Is Arabic grammar hard to learn?

The core is more regular than its reputation. Verbs follow a small set of patterns, the definite article never changes, and there is no present-tense 'to be' to conjugate. The hard parts are broken plurals, which have to be memorized noun by noun, and the case endings, which formal Arabic uses and no spoken dialect does. A learner aiming at conversation can learn to recognise the endings rather than produce them.

How do you say 1, 2, 3 up to 10 in Arabic?

In Modern Standard Arabic: wāḥid (1), ithnān (2), thalātha (3), arbaʿa (4), khamsa (5), sitta (6), sabʿa (7), thamāniya (8), tisʿa (9) and ʿashara (10). From 3 to 10 the number takes the opposite gender to the singular of the noun it counts, and the noun goes in the plural: thalāthatu kutubin, three books. Egyptian drops that gender switch and uses a short form such as talat before the noun.

Keep learning Arabic

• Arabic Learning ResourcesCheck out the lists of resources for learning Arabic.  Resources include grammar books, videos, and apps to help you learn Arabic.
• Arabic Harakat and Tashkeel: Every Mark on One LetterEvery Arabic diacritic on one letter: fatha, kasra, damma, sukun, shadda and the three tanwin, plus which real texts print harakat and which never do.
• Arabic Grammar BooksView our list of Arabic Grammar books used to help you learn the fundamentals of Arabic.
• Arabic Prepositions and the Cases They TakeEvery common Arabic preposition in one table, with script, transliteration, the genitive ending it forces on the next noun, and how it joins a pronoun suffix.