How do nouns change in Arabic?

Arabic nouns can change their form based on:

Gender and humanness are inherent to the noun, while number and definiteness are determined by context.

Case, on the other hand, is determined by the syntactic role of the noun.

In this post, we’ll go over gender and briefly touch on humanness. The rest will be addressed in separate articles.

Masculine and feminine in Arabic

The masculine form is the simplest and most basic shape. Feminine nouns are usually marked with a suffix, the ta marbuTa (ة).

As a general rule: if an Arabic noun does not have a ta marbuTa, it is masculine.

Arabic male given names are considered masculine, even if they end in taa marbuTa or alif, e.g., أسامة (Usaama) or مصطفى (Mustafaa).
Countries are generally feminine, with a few exceptions: المغرب (al maghrib – Morocco), الأردن (al ’urdun – Jordan), العراق (al ‘iraq – Iraq), السودان (al sudan – Sudan), and لبنان (lubnan – Lebanon).
City names are also feminine because the Arabic word for city (مدينة – madyna) is feminine.
Some nouns are feminine by nature but are spelled without ta marbuTa, instead ending with a regular ت — e.g., girl (بنت – bint), sister (أخت – ’ukht).

This is a unique and fascinating feature of Arabic nouns. It refers to whether the noun denotes a human being.

This becomes especially important when dealing with plurals:

If a plural noun refers to nonhuman things, it takes feminine singular agreement.
If a plural noun refers to humans, the agreement follows normal gender rules (masculine or feminine as appropriate).