Last updated: 2 months
The role of the second vowel in past tense Arabic Verbs
The vowel on the second root letter of an Arabic past tense verb tells you a lot about the character and meaning of the verb.
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The second radical is the most important component of the past tense. Only the second root letter can have any of the three vowels (a, i, u) in the past tense whereas the first and third must have فَتْحةٌ.
The second vowel can help us understand verbs better and may tell us more about the character and meaning of the verb. Let’s see why.
| “a” | فَعَلَ | an act; someone initiates something |
| “i” | فَعِلَ | a transitory state; |
| “u“ | فَعُلَ | a permanent state; |
Some examples:
| “a” | قَتَلَ | to kill |
| “a” | فَعَلَ | to do; to act |
| “i” | لَبِسَ | to dress |
| “i” | عَلِمَ | to know |
| “u“ | حَسُنَ | to be beautiful |
| “u“ | كَبُرَ | to be big |
This is generally but not universally true. There are exceptions because neighboring consonants have influenced the vowels (or the other way round). There is a rule of thumb for verbs of category 3 (فَعُلَ):
They usually don’t form an active participle – but a pseudo, quasi participle that describes the state of things (صِفةٌ مُشَبَّهةٌ). For example: big (ٌكَبِير), nice (لَطِيفٌ).
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Have an Arabic grammar question or problem? Leave a comment or message me.
Note: The feature image was generated by AI and is for illustration purposes only. The Arabic script in the image makes no sense – so please don’t try to decipher it ;-)
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Amazing! I had no idea about this 😅
قَتَلَ (u)?
Hi Teresa, do you mean the present tense (يَقْتُلُ)? This article only talks about the stem vowel of the past tense, which is “a” in قَتَلَ. Regarding the present tense, there are other rules.