اسم المرة: expressing frequency in Arabic

Let’s have a look at these two sentences:

1. قَفَزَ اللّاعِبُ قَفْزًا
2. قَفَزَ اللّاعِبُ قَفْزَةً

What is the difference?

The first two words are the same and mean the player jumped. So, what about the object? First of all, both sentences are correct, but the meaning is slightly different.

In Arabic, there is a way to emphasize, if a person has done…

1. Something in general (الْمَفْعُول الْمُطْلَق):قَفَزَ اللّاعِبُ قَفْزًا = the player jumped
2. Something only once or a certain number of times: قَفَزَ اللّاعِبُ قَفْزَةً = the player jumped once

Let us look at some examples:

If you use the regular مَصْدَر after a verb to emphasize an action, it means you are saying something in general or that you don’t know how often the action was being done.

In Arabic, however, there is a special form to emphasize the amount of times an action was being done.

The form فَعْلة is called اِسْم الْمَرّة and is a form of a مَصْدَر. You can recognize this form easily: It is the مَصْدَر plus a ة. The plural is built by the usual pattern for feminine nouns: ات. Since it has to be the object of a sentence, it has to be مَنْصُوب.

You will find more examples and tricky situations in the book Arabic for Nerds. Notice that there are many other masdar forms as well that are a great and handy tool to express certain ideas nicely.

• و as “When”, “With”, or “While”: The مفعول معه
• مَساءًا or مَساءً? Final Aleph rules in Arabic
• ما in Egyptian Arabic – is it “what” or “not” or what?
• لبيك (labbaika) – What does it mean?
• بَيْتًا or بَيْتاً? Where to put tanween in Arabic words?

picture credit: Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay