Arabic root system
Arabic morphology differs from that of English. To create a word in Arabic, you start with a string of consonants, usually three, and interconnect them with vowels or other consonants.
This concept isn’t entirely foreign to English. Think of irregular verbs and their related nouns, such as drink, drank, drunk, drink. You can also add prefixes and suffixes to form new words: re-drank, overdrink, drinking, drinks, drinker, drinkable, drunkenness, drunken, soft drink, hard drink, drinky, etc.
A similar process happens in Arabic. In these English examples, the consonants d, r, n, k form the root, while the other vowels and consonants create the patterns.
Let’s take a look at a simple Arabic root: ك ت ب, which relates to everything connected with writing.
As you can see, shifting the patterns around the root consonants can create different words, meanings, and sometimes plurals. We’ll go into more detail on each pattern when we talk about verbal forms.
How to find Arabic roots
Usually, a combination of three consonants forms the root, but not always. You can also find roots with two, four, or even five consonants.
While vowels and other consonants can appear in different positions, the root consonants must remain in the exact order; otherwise, it becomes a completely different root.
In this example, ك must come before ت, and ت must come before ب.
How to memorize Arabic quickly
Most Arabic words are made of two parts: a root and a pattern. You can’t use a root or a pattern on their own, they need to be combined to form a complete word.
If you know the meaning of the root (since all roots have a meaning) and understand what a specific pattern does to it, you can often guess the meaning of a word you’ve never seen before. This works for both reading and speaking. Pretty cool, huh?
Arabic dictionaries are also organised differently from English ones. Instead of listing words by their exact spelling, they are arranged by the root consonants, showing all the words derived from that root.
