Tenses in Arabic
Verb inflection in Arabic
Verbs in Arabic inflect for six categories: gender, number, person, tense, mood, and voice.
These inflections are marked through prefixes and suffixes, changes in vowel patterns, and modifications of the verb stem.
The gender, number, and person of a verb are determined by the subject.
In terms of gender, Arabic verbs are marked for feminine or masculine in the second and third person. The first person (I, we) is gender-neutral.
Arabic verbs are inflected for three number categories: singular, dual, and plural.
The dual is used only in the second person (“you two”) and the third person (“they two”), but not in the first person, there is no equivalent for “I two” or “we two.”
Regarding person, Arabic verbs inflect according to who is involved in the speech act, the speaker, the addressee, or the person spoken about.
Thus, verbs inflect for the first person (I, we), second person (you), and third person (he, she, they).
Arabic has two main tenses: past and present, and each verb has two corresponding stems, one used for the past and one for the present.
The past tense stem takes only suffixes, while the present tense stem takes both prefixes and suffixes to inflect properly.
Although Arabic also has other tense–aspect–mood forms, these two tenses form the core of the verbal system.
Present tense in Arabic
The present tense is formed from the present tense stem, to which a prefix and a suffix are added.
The stem by itself is not a complete word, it requires both the prefix and the suffix to form a meaningful verb.
As you may have guessed, the present tense refers to ongoing or uncompleted actions.
It corresponds to both the present simple and present continuous tenses in English, since Arabic does not make a formal distinction between the two.
Let’s look at some examples.
Future tense in Arabic
The future tense is formed by adding the prefix سـ (sa-) or the particle سوف (sawfa) to the present tense form of the verb.
Let’s look at some examples:
Past tense in Arabic
The past tense is formed by adding the appropriate person-marking suffix to the past tense stem.
Note: The third person masculine plural suffix is spelled with an alif (ا) that is not pronounced.
This is simply a traditional spelling convention, and the alif is omitted when the verb takes a pronoun object suffix, as in:
The past tense in Arabic is used to express a completed action, similar to the past simple or past perfect in English.
It can also convey a present perfect meaning in certain contexts, as in the following examples:
