A shocked woman with long brown hair and bright blue eyes, wearing a white shirt and a green jacket, questions in a speech bubble reading, 'SECOND VOWEL?', against a colorful pop art background with dynamic lines and patterns.

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.

Last updated: 2 months

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”فَعَلَan act; someone initiates something
i”فَعِلَa transitory state;
uفَعُلَa permanent state;
The underlying idea of the vowel associated with the second root letter.

Some examples:

a”قَتَلَto kill
a”فَعَلَto do; to act
i”لَبِسَto dress
i”عَلِمَto know
uحَسُنَto be beautiful
uكَبُرَto be big
Note that the first column refers to the vowel associated with the second root letter.

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 – but a pseudo, 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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thearabicpages
thearabicpages
3 years ago

Amazing! I had no idea about this 😅

Teresa
Teresa
3 years ago

قَتَلَ (u)?

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