Sorry, no sounds yet!

Now it is time for a quick look at the present tense. Again only a few forms are in frequent use in the quraan, but a table is provided for reference as you will come across most of the others as well!

Note that I have not put any vowel sounds on the second root letter - this is because they vary with each verb. But you do not have to worry about learing which verb uses which vowel, since it will be written out in front of you as you read the quraan, and the root letter itself is what you need for finding the word in a dictionary. On the other hand, when checking the meaning of a word, you should be aware of this vowel since it will change the precise meaning.

	Feminine			Masculine
PLURAL	DUAL	SINGULAR	PLURAL	DUAL	SINGULAR	Person
						1st - I, We
						2nd - You
						3rd - He, She, It, They

Note that they all have a single letter prefixed on the front - either a أ, ن, ت or ى. Some of the forms have a letter or two added at the end. Be aware that these same letter pairs can also be added to nouns as a way to make plurals.

The really common forms are - 'they do', - 'we do' and - 'he does'.

Hopefully you spotted two very good candidates for the present tense.
You may have got the first word 'and' and even that the second word might have a 'they/them' tacked on the end.

The last word exactly matches the reference table, and means 'they do'
The third word also looks like a 'they something' and removing the last two letters and the first gives us the root directly - قول which you may recognise as'speak/say,' so we have 'they say'. Now you may have spotted that this does not match the pattern exactly, because there is a ُ over the ق instead of a ْ. This is just a quirk of weak root letters - sometimes they disappear, and sometimes their vowel sound gets shifted onto the previous letter. Fortunately there are not many of these to deal with!

So far we have 'and ?they they say ? ? they do'.

ما either means 'what' as in 'that which', or can be used to make the following verb negative. Since it is not followed by a verb, it must mean 'what' here.

لا means 'not' and negates the following verb.

اَنَّهُم does indeed comprise a هُم tacked on اَنَّ meaning 'that - '

which give us:

'and that they they say what not they do' or if you like 'and that they say that which they do not do'
- which may be a comment on 'practicing what you preach'!

Recognising a couple of the common forms of the present tense.

By reviewing the table of forms, realisng there are only a couple of different leters that are added to the present form - this wll make it easy for you to quickly accept/reject when trying to identify an unknown word.

The particle اَنَّ meaning 'that...'

The particles ما and لا

Once again, that roots when there is a weak letter (و, ا or ي) need watching.

Introduction    Contents    Previous    Next