Here are 100 questions about Arabic, its alphabet, its grammar and The Arabic Alphabet:
1. How many letters are there in the Arabic alphabet?
2. Why do Arabs disagree about the exact number of letters in the alphabet?
3. Everybody agrees on certain letters. What is the criterion for the letters that are included by all users?
4. What is the difference between abjadi letters and hija letters?
5. To which group of languages does Arabic belong?
6. What other languages in this group can you name?
7. What are the common characteristics of this group of languages?
8. Some single Arabic letters carry meanings, usually when preceding or following another word (nouns, verbs, interrogative particles, conjunctions). Can you name three examples?
9. How many do you know about in total?
10. Why do some people describe Arabic as a succinct, even telegraphic language?
11. What are the two types of hamza?
12. Which one of this is used as the definite article?
13. Which Arab countries’ names do not include the definite article?
14. What are the three seats/chairs of hamza?
15. What seat does hamza have when it is the initial consonant in a word?
16. What are the Arabic letters that are pronounced more or less like their English equivalents?
17. What are the letters of increase?
18. What are the spelling and pronunciation variants of the taa marbuuta?
19. What is a madda? on which letter does it always appear?
20. Which letters or combinations of letters are used to denote feminine gender?
21. Do you know what gemination (xxx) means?
22. What is the origin of the terms “sun letters” and “moon letters”?
23. What diacritical symbol is used to indicate gemination?
24. In Arabic certain pairs of letters have special written forms, ligatures. Can you give five examples?
25. Do you know how many of these ligatures there are in total?
26. The vowel system of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has six phonemes, what are they?
27. Can you name the three pairs of short vowels with their long counterparts?
28. Which of these are represented by independent letters?
29. Why has Arabic stayed a unified language rather than dividing into different languages as, for instance, Latin developed into French, Italian, Spanish etc.?
30. If we look at the English letter A in sad, swan, far, saw it sounds different in each of the words. Something similar happens to the Arabic alif, can you give three examples of alif making different sounds in Arabic words?
31. What is a dagger alif?
32. What is the naHw? and what is the sarf?
33. How many consonants are usually found in an Arabic root?
34. A ____________ is a template onto which different roots can be mapped.
35. Why are verbal nouns called “the source” in Arabic?
36. Verbal noun/gerund/infinitive—which of these English grammar terms corresponds most closely to the Arabic “source”?
37. In expressions such as “possessor of beauty,” “father of two tongues,” and “son of fifty years,” how does Arabic express the first two words of the phrases?
38. What are the five nouns?
39. Can you say in what area humanness affects Arabic nouns?
40. Which of the following are the three main reasons why it is considered better to learn grammatical terms in their Arabic forms than in English?
a. English terms do not exactly map onto Arabic grammar
b. Different teachers use different English terms.
c. The Arabic terms give a helpful description of what the term’s function really is.
d.
e.
41. What characteristics of Arabic make it considered a rich language?
42. When hamza is written “on the line,” how is it written?
43. How are sounds that are not found in Arabic represented in other languages that have adopted Arabic writing?
44. Who decides the gender of new noun that comes into the language?
45. In what circumstances does the letter ya lose its two dots or points.
46. What are the lafif (complicated or tangled) verbs?
47. How are numerical adverbs (once, twice, several times) expressed in Arabic?
48. How are distributive adjectives (two by two, three by three, etc.) expressed in Arabic?
49. What are the three parts of speech in Arabic?
50. Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number and case, but with certain exceptions. Can you name the exceptions?
51. Which is more common in Arabic: sound masculine plural or broken plural?
52. Do any words have more than one broken plural?
53. How is the relative adjective (those related to a place, activity or trade such as Egyptian, commercial) formed?
54. Apart from prose, what are the two other genres of Arabic writing?
55. Does the language of the Quran belong to any genre?
56. Which grammatical cases exist in Arabic?
57. Which diacriticals mark these cases?
58. Why is some Arabic punctuation upside down in comparison to that of European languages?
59. Some people describe the number system in Arabic as complicated. In what ways is it complicated?
60. What is used to indicate questions in MSA?
61. What is used to indicate questions in colloquial Arabic?
62. What is the Arabic name for the construction of a noun plus a genitive noun (noun-noun genitive construct)? Can you name three types?
63. Is it possible to combine prepositions with verbs?
64. Can you name three functions of hattaa in Arabic syntax?
65. Can you give three ways in which you might give Arabic expression an antique flavor?
66. Can ayna, “where,” be used as an adverb of place (locative adverb). (This is where I met her?)
67. Certain groups of verbs and particles are described as “sisters” in Arabic—what does this mean?
68. The inflection of Arabic verbs falls into six morphological categories: can you give these categories?
69. CaCVC refers to what group of Arabic verbs?
70. What is the commonest vocative particle in Arabic?
71. How are passive verbs derived from the active voice?
72. How are verbs in imperfect subjunctive and jussive made passive?
73. What are derived forms useful for?
74. Why are word patterns of prime importance in understanding Arabic?
75. What is a hollow verb?
76. Under what letter will the word madrasa (school) be listed in an Arabic dictionary?
77. What is a noun of instrument? and what is its commonest form?
True or False?
78. No word or syllable in Arabic starts with a vowel.
79. Arabic dictionaries are based upon lexical roots and not words’ spelling.
80. Arabic verbs are marked for gender only in the second and third persons.
81. Plural in Arabic applies to more than one entity.
82. The marker for the definite is attached to the beginning of a word, while the marker for the indefinite is attached to the end of a word.
83. Cases are marked only by short vowels: fatha for accusative, damma for nominative and kasra for genitive.
84. Colloquial Arabic does not use case markers.
85. It is considered poor style in Arabic to start a sentence with “And...”
86. Verbs of heart include verbs of thinking, finding and imagination.
87. There are only two genders in Arabic.
88. Parts of the body that come in pairs (ears, eyes, hands etc.) are almost all feminine.
89. If a noun can be masculine or feminine, then feminine is preferred.
90. Many words have collective meanings in their singular form.
91. The rule of idafa states that nothing can come in between a noun and the following genitive.
92. For a large number of Arabic nouns the “sound plural” does not exist at all.
93. The order of the alphabet when the letters are used as numerals is the same as that of the regular alphabet.
94. The verb to be is omitted in Arabic when the meaning is present indicative, such as “is” or “are.”
95. The taa marbuuta is added to masculine nouns and adjectives to make them feminine.
96. In colloquial Arabic, interrogative particles are never used.
97. The simplest form of any Arabic verb is third person masculine singular.
98. Arabic is usually divided into classical Arabic, MSA/literary Arabic, colloquial/spoken Arabic.
99. Arabic is written from right to left, the script is cursive, and there is no separate printed form.
100. Nouns of place and time are formed by the prefix mim- added to the triliteral root.
101. Hamza may be described as the act of breathing, comparable to the sound that occurs when a sentence in English starts with a vowel.
102. In most modern Arabic, the vowel signs are not written or printed, so that the reader has to supply them.
103. Attached pronouns are attached to verbs (as direct objects), prepositions, nouns (to indicate possession), and the particle inna and its sisters.
104. If a demonstrative adjective is qualifying a simple noun, it precedes it and the noun takes the definite article.
105. The normal word order in an Arabic sentence is verb–subject–direct object–adverbial and other matter.
106. If no subject is mentioned it is already implicit in the verb or context.
107. In the present indicative the verb “to be” is not used and is replaced by a nominal sentence.
108. A verb in the third person that comes before the subject is always in the singular.
109. When a verb follows the subject it agrees with the number and gender, when it precedes the subject it just agrees in gender.
110. All words and names ending in taa marbuuta are feminine.
111. When the attached pronoun -i is attached to a verb in the first person singular it takes the form –ni.
112. The verb to be cannot be used impersonally, e.g., there is a cup of coffee.
113. Kullun when followed by a definite noun in the genitive singular means all/each/every and when it is with the genitive plural means all.
114. In the imperative alif may be voweled with a damma or a kasra.
115. There is not set form for the verbal noun of the triliteral verb in its root form.
116. The passive voice is formed merely by changing the way in which the active voice is voweled.
117. Verbal nouns can have more than one form.
118. The main problem with writing verbs with hamza is orthographic.
119. After the number 10, ordinals are no longer used, and cardinal numbers are used in their place.
120. Some verbs have several verbal nouns without distinction of meaning.
121. Verbal nouns may be used as noun, as a verb and as an absolute object.
122. Among the common types of nouns to take sound masculine plural are participles of verbs and nouns of professionals/occupations.
123. Sound feminine plural is confined to female human beings.
124. Very few verb roots include all the derived forms from II to X.
1. How many letters are there in the Arabic alphabet?
2. Why do Arabs disagree about the exact number of letters in the alphabet?
3. Everybody agrees on certain letters. What is the criterion for the letters that are included by all users?
4. What is the difference between abjadi letters and hija letters?
5. To which group of languages does Arabic belong?
6. What other languages in this group can you name?
7. What are the common characteristics of this group of languages?
8. Some single Arabic letters carry meanings, usually when preceding or following another word (nouns, verbs, interrogative particles, conjunctions). Can you name three examples?
9. How many do you know about in total?
10. Why do some people describe Arabic as a succinct, even telegraphic language?
11. What are the two types of hamza?
12. Which one of this is used as the definite article?
13. Which Arab countries’ names do not include the definite article?
14. What are the three seats/chairs of hamza?
15. What seat does hamza have when it is the initial consonant in a word?
16. What are the Arabic letters that are pronounced more or less like their English equivalents?
17. What are the letters of increase?
18. What are the spelling and pronunciation variants of the taa marbuuta?
19. What is a madda? on which letter does it always appear?
20. Which letters or combinations of letters are used to denote feminine gender?
21. Do you know what gemination (xxx) means?
22. What is the origin of the terms “sun letters” and “moon letters”?
23. What diacritical symbol is used to indicate gemination?
24. In Arabic certain pairs of letters have special written forms, ligatures. Can you give five examples?
25. Do you know how many of these ligatures there are in total?
26. The vowel system of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) has six phonemes, what are they?
27. Can you name the three pairs of short vowels with their long counterparts?
28. Which of these are represented by independent letters?
29. Why has Arabic stayed a unified language rather than dividing into different languages as, for instance, Latin developed into French, Italian, Spanish etc.?
30. If we look at the English letter A in sad, swan, far, saw it sounds different in each of the words. Something similar happens to the Arabic alif, can you give three examples of alif making different sounds in Arabic words?
31. What is a dagger alif?
32. What is the naHw? and what is the sarf?
33. How many consonants are usually found in an Arabic root?
34. A ____________ is a template onto which different roots can be mapped.
35. Why are verbal nouns called “the source” in Arabic?
36. Verbal noun/gerund/infinitive—which of these English grammar terms corresponds most closely to the Arabic “source”?
37. In expressions such as “possessor of beauty,” “father of two tongues,” and “son of fifty years,” how does Arabic express the first two words of the phrases?
38. What are the five nouns?
39. Can you say in what area humanness affects Arabic nouns?
40. Which of the following are the three main reasons why it is considered better to learn grammatical terms in their Arabic forms than in English?
a. English terms do not exactly map onto Arabic grammar
b. Different teachers use different English terms.
c. The Arabic terms give a helpful description of what the term’s function really is.
d.
e.
41. What characteristics of Arabic make it considered a rich language?
42. When hamza is written “on the line,” how is it written?
43. How are sounds that are not found in Arabic represented in other languages that have adopted Arabic writing?
44. Who decides the gender of new noun that comes into the language?
45. In what circumstances does the letter ya lose its two dots or points.
46. What are the lafif (complicated or tangled) verbs?
47. How are numerical adverbs (once, twice, several times) expressed in Arabic?
48. How are distributive adjectives (two by two, three by three, etc.) expressed in Arabic?
49. What are the three parts of speech in Arabic?
50. Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number and case, but with certain exceptions. Can you name the exceptions?
51. Which is more common in Arabic: sound masculine plural or broken plural?
52. Do any words have more than one broken plural?
53. How is the relative adjective (those related to a place, activity or trade such as Egyptian, commercial) formed?
54. Apart from prose, what are the two other genres of Arabic writing?
55. Does the language of the Quran belong to any genre?
56. Which grammatical cases exist in Arabic?
57. Which diacriticals mark these cases?
58. Why is some Arabic punctuation upside down in comparison to that of European languages?
59. Some people describe the number system in Arabic as complicated. In what ways is it complicated?
60. What is used to indicate questions in MSA?
61. What is used to indicate questions in colloquial Arabic?
62. What is the Arabic name for the construction of a noun plus a genitive noun (noun-noun genitive construct)? Can you name three types?
63. Is it possible to combine prepositions with verbs?
64. Can you name three functions of hattaa in Arabic syntax?
65. Can you give three ways in which you might give Arabic expression an antique flavor?
66. Can ayna, “where,” be used as an adverb of place (locative adverb). (This is where I met her?)
67. Certain groups of verbs and particles are described as “sisters” in Arabic—what does this mean?
68. The inflection of Arabic verbs falls into six morphological categories: can you give these categories?
69. CaCVC refers to what group of Arabic verbs?
70. What is the commonest vocative particle in Arabic?
71. How are passive verbs derived from the active voice?
72. How are verbs in imperfect subjunctive and jussive made passive?
73. What are derived forms useful for?
74. Why are word patterns of prime importance in understanding Arabic?
75. What is a hollow verb?
76. Under what letter will the word madrasa (school) be listed in an Arabic dictionary?
77. What is a noun of instrument? and what is its commonest form?
True or False?
78. No word or syllable in Arabic starts with a vowel.
79. Arabic dictionaries are based upon lexical roots and not words’ spelling.
80. Arabic verbs are marked for gender only in the second and third persons.
81. Plural in Arabic applies to more than one entity.
82. The marker for the definite is attached to the beginning of a word, while the marker for the indefinite is attached to the end of a word.
83. Cases are marked only by short vowels: fatha for accusative, damma for nominative and kasra for genitive.
84. Colloquial Arabic does not use case markers.
85. It is considered poor style in Arabic to start a sentence with “And...”
86. Verbs of heart include verbs of thinking, finding and imagination.
87. There are only two genders in Arabic.
88. Parts of the body that come in pairs (ears, eyes, hands etc.) are almost all feminine.
89. If a noun can be masculine or feminine, then feminine is preferred.
90. Many words have collective meanings in their singular form.
91. The rule of idafa states that nothing can come in between a noun and the following genitive.
92. For a large number of Arabic nouns the “sound plural” does not exist at all.
93. The order of the alphabet when the letters are used as numerals is the same as that of the regular alphabet.
94. The verb to be is omitted in Arabic when the meaning is present indicative, such as “is” or “are.”
95. The taa marbuuta is added to masculine nouns and adjectives to make them feminine.
96. In colloquial Arabic, interrogative particles are never used.
97. The simplest form of any Arabic verb is third person masculine singular.
98. Arabic is usually divided into classical Arabic, MSA/literary Arabic, colloquial/spoken Arabic.
99. Arabic is written from right to left, the script is cursive, and there is no separate printed form.
100. Nouns of place and time are formed by the prefix mim- added to the triliteral root.
101. Hamza may be described as the act of breathing, comparable to the sound that occurs when a sentence in English starts with a vowel.
102. In most modern Arabic, the vowel signs are not written or printed, so that the reader has to supply them.
103. Attached pronouns are attached to verbs (as direct objects), prepositions, nouns (to indicate possession), and the particle inna and its sisters.
104. If a demonstrative adjective is qualifying a simple noun, it precedes it and the noun takes the definite article.
105. The normal word order in an Arabic sentence is verb–subject–direct object–adverbial and other matter.
106. If no subject is mentioned it is already implicit in the verb or context.
107. In the present indicative the verb “to be” is not used and is replaced by a nominal sentence.
108. A verb in the third person that comes before the subject is always in the singular.
109. When a verb follows the subject it agrees with the number and gender, when it precedes the subject it just agrees in gender.
110. All words and names ending in taa marbuuta are feminine.
111. When the attached pronoun -i is attached to a verb in the first person singular it takes the form –ni.
112. The verb to be cannot be used impersonally, e.g., there is a cup of coffee.
113. Kullun when followed by a definite noun in the genitive singular means all/each/every and when it is with the genitive plural means all.
114. In the imperative alif may be voweled with a damma or a kasra.
115. There is not set form for the verbal noun of the triliteral verb in its root form.
116. The passive voice is formed merely by changing the way in which the active voice is voweled.
117. Verbal nouns can have more than one form.
118. The main problem with writing verbs with hamza is orthographic.
119. After the number 10, ordinals are no longer used, and cardinal numbers are used in their place.
120. Some verbs have several verbal nouns without distinction of meaning.
121. Verbal nouns may be used as noun, as a verb and as an absolute object.
122. Among the common types of nouns to take sound masculine plural are participles of verbs and nouns of professionals/occupations.
123. Sound feminine plural is confined to female human beings.
124. Very few verb roots include all the derived forms from II to X.