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Week 3.

2 : The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb


Introduction
We are now in our 2nd video of week 3. This is the presentation and well be
developing the ( imperfect) verb. The verb in the Arabic language that conveys both
the present and the future tense.

Topics to be Covered
Were going to go step by step.

First well speak about the meanings associated to the verb. And then well start
filling the slots.
Well speak about fundamentally how this verb differs to the past tense verb.

Your To-Do List


What Id like you to do is:

Try to watch the presentation, conjugation by conjugation as it is being developed,


and try to come out with as much memorization of the table as you can while the
presentation is going on. Im confident

that youll be able to do it.

At certain stages the text might get a little small because we want to fit everything
on the slide. Along with the video, theres a PDF document of the table to
download. I would suggest printing that out if you feel the text is too small. Or you
might want to maximize the screen while youre watching the video to be able to
see it properly.
Lets proceed with it

Definition and Possible Meanings


It is the verb that indicates on both the present and the future tense. The total amount of
meanings that you can get from this single verb is 3:

Shariah Program - 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

1. Simple present tense


2. Continuous present tense
3. Possibility of future tense
This is true for active and this is also true for passive.
Here is the examples for active :
The 3 translations:
1. Simple Present tense: He helps
Without indicating on whether the action is happening again and again, or whether it is a
prolonged action. It's just a very simple meaning: He helps.
2. Or it could be Continuous present tense: He is helping.
He is actively engaged in the act of helping.
3. Or Future Tense: He will help.
That's the future meaning.
Here is the example for passive :
The 3 translations will be:
1. He is helped. Meaning someone else helped him.
2. He is being helped.
3. And finally: He will be helped.

You could do any action: 'hitting', 'eating' ,'drinking' etc.


He eats / He is eating / He will eat. That doesn't lend itself too much to passive. For
example with 'hitting' it would be: He is hit / He is being hit / He will be hit.
That [the above] was the meanings associated to the verb. The rest of the presentation will
speak about the method of construction.
How does the verb differ from the verb?
Fundamentally, what makes this verb different from the past tense (perfect tense) is that
this one has a letter at the front along with an ending.
Conjugation # 1 doesn't have an ending because that is the default one. When you see
there's no ending, then it means 'he'.
The dual will have a particular ending. The masculine plural will have a different ending. By
that you'll be able to distinguish between the conjugations.

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

Construction of the
The verb has suffixes as well as prefixes. Or you can say that there's 1 of 4 particular
letters at the front. They are contained in the acronym

Either a will be at the front, a , a or a .


The purpose of this letter at the front is to first of all distinguish from the past/perfect,
because the perfect one does not have it:

, , .

There is no letter at the front.

The reason for the letter at the front is because you can't leave it to vowels only. When
you're reading a classical Arabic book the vowels won't be there. You need an actual script
difference, something that could be written in the text. And that's why the letter is there at
the front.
Now instead of having a single letter throughout all 14, we have these four letters. But
since the conjugations are 14 they are going to need to be used more than once. They are
going to need to be recycled.

The comes in 4 of them and we'll mention in the next slide which four.

The comes in 8 of them.

The comes in #13.

And the comes in #14.

Let's continue with it. Beyond the letter at the front you're going to have something at the
end also .
In the , #1 had no ending. In the we can afford to have more than one with no
ending because the letter at the front will differentiate.
So you see, the conveyance of meaning happening here is different than the way it was
happening in the past tense verb, and you'll notice this as we move forward with the
development of the table.

Construction of the

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

Five of the conjugations do not have an ending. The position is the last letter in 5 of
them.
And like I mentioned what allows that is the fact that the prefix will be different. There
needs to be some difference, and the difference does not necessarily need to be at the end.
The beginning can serve to distinguish between the conjugations.

The remaining nine conjugations, will have endings, and based on the common ending they
are put into groups.

All four duals will have an and at the end ()

The two plural masculines have a common ending and that's the coupled with the

: () : .The beginning portion would distinguish

#3 is

#9 is

#3 and #9.

The two plural feminines have only . Their suffix is only a (


).

And conjugation # 10 has its own ending which is a preceded by a followed


by

)(. So you're going to get .

occurs four times.

occurs twice.

Just
twice.

And will occur in conjugation # 10, when you're speaking to one


female.

You're going to see all of that as we develop the table. And we will start showing you the
conjugations as they're complete.

Step 1: Attach the Prefix


On all 14 conjugations you're going to attach one of the four following letters. Either a , a

, a , or a

. And it's going to come before the

position.

Shariah Program 2003-2012

The position is going to

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

become saakin.
You'll hear
, ,

and .

will be attached to four of them.

The top 3.

, , .

Skip two and then on the

group of females. The two we just skipped right now will be , .


So now we have , , , , , and then all middle six are , , , ,

, .

Conjugation #13 has the at the front.

And conjugation # 14 had the .

Isolating the front portion, (not the entire verb) is what you should be able to do before
moving on to the next slide. You can pause the video at this stage and make sure you can
do this properly before moving forward.
Here it is:

, , , , , , six s , and .

Just lift your head from the screen and be able to do that.

s , a and .

, , , , , , six

And that's 30% of the entire table if you can do that.

Let's move forward and let's start developing the ending.

Step 2: The Five 'Singulars'


There's no ending, i.e. no actual letter. In the table there was only the first one that
had no extra letter: . But here we can afford to have more of them with no designated
letter at the end, because the front portion will differentiate and distinguish between them.
And we'll have a little overlap.
Five conjugations do not have any ending. And instead what you'll see is the position
having a .

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

The top one is and it's complete. Nothing further. It means :He helps/ is helping / will
help.
The fourth one is , and there's a clear difference between #1 and #4.

#1 is when you're speaking about one male.


#4 is when you're speaking about one female.

They are identical. The only difference is the at the front or the at the front.
Here you see all five of them [1- 4- 7- 13- 14- ] In the title it says,
"Five 'Singulars' ". Singulars is in quotes because it's not entirely accurate because you see
#10, which is a singular but it is not part of the group. Remember the association table
layout we gave to you in Week 1. You should know the way it is distributed cold. The top six
is 3rd person, middle six is 2nd person , and then 'I' and 'We' at the bottom.
When we say, "Five singulars " accurately it would be 1, 4, 7, 10 and 13. But notice that #10
is not part of the group. #10 will be discussed later. It has its own unique ending.
We're generalizing a little when we say "five singulars". #14 on the other hand happens to
belong to the group. Not because it's a singular, but because it has the same ending.
So "Five 'singulars'" is just a convenient short hand to refer to the whole group.

is 'he' , is 'she'. The other is 'you' when you're speaking to one male and

those two are identical. Basically the same verb will be used when speaking about a female
and the same identical conjugation will be used when you're speaking to a male.
What allows that recycling is because the occasion of the 3rd person is radically different
than the occasion of 2nd person. Because when you use the verb as part of a sentence in a
paragraph, then it's pretty easy to figure out what's what.
If you have an evoking e.g. oh Zaid
you say, "

then obviously that's conjugation #7.

But when

" then obviously that will be conjugation #4.

is clearly distinct. That's the 'I' one.

And is when the doer of the verb is the speaker himself talking about a group.
Back in the , week 1.3, people asked a question: if you have a mixed group of males
and females what do you do?
Answer: in conjugation #14 it doesn't matter because gender becomes irrelevant. If it was

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

3rd person then you would use conjugation #3. And if it was 2nd person you would use the
pronoun that's reserved for a group of males.
When there's males and females together being talked about then it's the male group that's
chosen for that purpose.
Anyways, that was a side topic. Let's continue.

, , , , are the 5 singulars.


Now we're going to speak about the four duals. All four duals have the common ending of
and . So - and so on.
[Mufti Saheb makes reference to the table in the video] The new conjugations are
highlighted in yellow and we still have a bunch of slots to fill. The duals and the plurals do
need to be talked about, so let's move forward with the four duals.

Step 3: The Four Duals


The ending of the four duals is the like we mentioned earlier. The position will have a

, and that's obviously because alif

necessitates a

prior to it. So you're going to get

, , , - four times.
And when we say four duals we literally mean four duals and it's not like how we were
generalizing previously. We said 'singular' but #14 was part of the group also. Over here it's
the actual four duals that are being talked about. And you can see them all on the screen.
[

- ]

is conjugation #2. Now notice 5, 8, and 11 . 5 is when you are speaking about two

females. 8 is when you're speaking to two males and #11 is when you're speaking to two
females. All three of those are identical.

, , .

Now the overlap between 8 and 11 is understandable because that happened in also.

, .

It came twice. Remember that?

, , , , , .

It's not

a big deal because in English they make no distinction. They say 'you' regardless of whether
you're speaking to a male or a female, two males, two females, group of males or group of

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

females, it's the same pronoun used for all six of those. But actually there's only four in
English, because there's no dual in English. But the point is that there's no differentiation
between masculine and feminine in English.

Here in Arabic, normally we would have a differentiation like you're seeing in # 2 and #5. #2
is for the two males:

. #5 is for when you're speaking about two females: . So

those two are different.

In 2nd person it becomes irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether you're speaking to two
males or you're speaking to two females, you're going to use the same verb for that.
Now take these four and combine it with the previous five, and we have the entire table,
you can see it on the next screen.
Now at this stage it would be an appropriate time to pause the video and be able to do this.
Lift your head up from the screen and be able to do this:

, , , .

Again , and finally there's #11, then , .

Or do it like this , , skip one.

, , skip one . , , skip two and

then again. And then finally , at the end.

If you can't recite it, then just be able to picture it. Two, two , two, one on its own, then
, at the bottom.
Notice the beginnings.

for the masculines, one male and two males.

.
One female and two female identical to the masculine. The only difference is the at the
front:

, .

And those two are repeated again for #7 and #8, but this time you're

speaking to one male or two males.

, .

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

For two females, it's identical. We don't know what is for one female. Not yet. Conjugation
# 10 is yet to be developed. And then finally at the end , .

Step 4: The Masculine Plurals


Let's move on to the group of males: #3 and #9. They both have a common ending and
difference at the beginning, because remember , , and later it was six s in the
middle .

That beginning portion will distinguish between whether you are speaking about a group of
males or whether you're speaking to a group of males.
The common ending is a . It is the same that we saw over there in

. , , .

Over here the is coming back, but this time along with the we have a

) ( .

The

whole purpose of putting behind the will be talked about later. It's not part of the
introductory theory. You don't need to know why that is there, but when you recite the
tables, make sure you pronounce the .
We have . And this occurs twice. It occurs in conjugation #3 , which is when you're
speaking about a group of males. And it occurs again in conjugation #9, when you're
speaking to a group of males. You can see both of those isolated here.

is the complete verb form for #3 , and


Now we have the top 3, the whole group is there.

is the conjugation for #9.

, , .

And you need to be

able to do that. If you can do that, just know later on it's going to be , ,
when you're speaking to the group of males. It is identical. The only difference is the front.
Singular, singular. Dual, dual. Plural, plural. They correspond and they match completely
and that's like half of the table.

, , .

Later down is , , , the

ones in the middle.

Even after the video is done you can pull out the pdf document and just spend ten, fifteen,
maybe twenty minutes on it. And you should know the table. It's not whole memorization

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

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either, it's noting the differences and how the conjugations are formed.

Step 5: The Feminine Plurals


The next logical group to speak about will be conjugation #6 and conjugation number #12,
the two plural feminines. The ending for those two is just a
your attention to , , ,

, , .

And here I'd like to draw

This is the same ending we get here.

Except it's not , it's , with the at the front. Or


with the at the front, in
the case of conjugation #12.
The prefixes is what distinguishes it. Take away the prefix, it becomes #6.
It's the addition of the at the front that distinguishes this verb from that one (the ) .
Other than that the ending is the same. But then not only that, it's repeated again in #12.
What allows the repetition in #12 is the beginning portion being different.

versus .

You see, in order to distinguish the from the , what we needed is a prefix. But
then what was given was not one prefix but one of four. The was used four times and the

was used eight times.

And this then allowed the recycling of the endings.

You get a lot of overlap here.


In the case of the duals you have pure overlap, but I already reasoned that and I mentioned
to you why that's not problematic. Because when you're speaking in the 2nd person it
makes no difference, because even in the

, came twice.

The third person

feminine dual overlaping with the dual in the 2nd person is not problematic either because
of context. You'll be able to tell whether two females are being spoken about or whether
you're speaking to two males.
There is some overlap here and that's okay. Not a problem.
Let's add these two to the list and now we have 13 of them.

, , , , , change the letter at the front you get .

And then

, , , which is identical to the top three except , , at the beginning.


#10 is yet to be given and then
for the dual, when you're speaking to two females.

for the group of females.

And then , ends the table.

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

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Step 6: Conjugation # 10
Conjugation # 10 has its own unique ending, which is a preceded by a . And that
would create

: .

And one tip for you is that the 9th one is . Group of males, right? And #10 is when you're
speaking to one female.
So, group of males and one female are polar opposite, right? And then the polar opposite of
a preceded by a will be a preceded by a .
Now you have the entire table.

From the top:

[He],

[She],

[You (1M)],
[ You (2M)], [ You (3+M)],

[They (2M)], [ They (3+M)],


[They (2F)],

[ They (3+F)] ,

[You (1F)],
[ You (2F)],

[You (3+F)],

[ I ], [ We].

Now you can see the entire table without the highlights. You can maximize the screen if it's
difficult to read, or you can print out the pdf. Or just open up the pdf and look at that and
the entire table is there.
Let's now speak about passive and the negative and then we're done with the presentation.
There is not much going on here. Most of it is just listing.

The Passive Voice


In order to create passive you have to make two modifications. Second to last letter in our
example ,
, already had a

, so there was no change.

Shariah Program 2003-2012

You wouldn't

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

change that, but does not have a

12

so second to last letter you would change it to a

if it is not already .
That's a little bit of an advanced topic. Normally I wouldn't give it this early. But verbs could
be bigger, you know that. Verbs could have irregularities. Many things can happen to
verbs.
One thing that can happen to a verb is that the middle letter, the position does not
necessarily need to be a

In the example that we gave you that was already a

There's no change required. But

pretend that it's a and then that will need to be changed to a .


Pretend that it's a then that would need to be changed to a as part of
creating passive.
The next change would be the sign of . The very first letter. The sign of imperfection
will be given a .

become .

Here are some additional examples to really highlight it for you:

means: It is opened. Now, means: He opens/ He is opening / He will

open.

Passive is . The translation is: It is opened / It is being opened / It will be


opened.

See the change is only at the beginning. The second to last letter already had a

in

so that just carried forward to the passive. And became and now we have passive.

which is #13 : I am hitting / I hit / I am hitting / I will hit.

That is the active. When you change that to passive not only do you have to change the
to , but you also have to change the too.

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

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Step number 1) second to last letter change it to a

if it is not already a .

2) And then sign of , give it a .

new translation: I am hit/ I am being hit / I will be hit.

Conjugation #14 of is . means: I helped / I am helping / I will help.

Passive is . Not only do we have to change the beginning portion to


the second to last letter changes to a

, and the new translation is:

, but

We are

helped / We are being helped / We will be helped.

Negative Tenses
For the negative what you do is add a '
' to both of those that we just did right now. And
this creates four tables.

And they are all 14, 14, 14, 14 conjugations.

- -

And here is the examples for negative:

The three translations are written underneath : He does not help / He is

not helping / He will not help.


o The first translation is the basic one, simple.
o Second translations is present continuous: He is not helping.
o The final translation is future tense: He will not help.
For passive

(
) the three translations are written underneath : He is not helped / He is not
being helped / He will not be helped.

This now concludes the presentation. Now when you download the pdf document you'll
notice that the verbs are there but underneath the verbs the English translations have not
been given. And that is your exercise. That was done intentionally.
So please, underneath the video do not ask for a new document that has the translations
written underneath the verbs. Because if you do it without the translation written
underneath the verb, and you are able to fill those translations on your own mentally,

Shariah Program 2003-2012

Week 3.2 The Imperfect (Mudhaari') Verb

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without writing it, that means you understand the topic. That means that you have
achieved the objective of the science.
It is more to do with making those associations. Knowing the table layout, knowing that the
top six are referring to 3rd person: 'He', 'they', 'they', 'she', 'they', 'they', and the middle six
are 'you', and 'I' and 'we' at the bottom. Knowing that the pattern is giving us the simple
present, continuous and future tense, and how that is reflected in English.
It was done in the presentation at the beginning. And it was done for the passives and now I
just did it for the negatives.
This concludes the presentation and

we'll see with the Stories of the Prophets book

Shariah Program 2003-2012

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