جَدْوَل
root: ج-د-ل / noun / plural: جَداوِل / definition: chart, table
I can’t quite believe that I have been posting on this blog since October without actually posting an Arabic verb table for reference. So, without further ado:
The table is pretty self-explanatory if you know the basics, but here’s just a few notes:
- The “measure” (a.k.a. form) is written in roman numerals, as explained in my post about how to use the Hans Wehr dictionary
- “Perfect”=past tense, “imperfect”=present tense
- The imperatives and verbal nouns for form I verbs are variable—for the verbal nouns, you’ll just have to memorise them, but for the imperatives, there’s a way to know which vowels to use (see Imperatives of Sound Form I Verbs)
- Form IX is the least common of these 10 forms (as indicated in the first column, form IX verbs generally either carry the meaning of “becoming a certain colour” or types of defects or disabilities)
- This table only shows the most common forms of three-letter, a.k.a. triliteral, roots (you can find a table of verb forms for four-letter (quadriliteral) roots here!)
- There are actually fifteen verb forms for three-letter roots, but I-X are overwhelmingly more common—here‘s a table of forms XI-XV if you’re interested
- Or simply download my chart of all the verb forms (triliteral I-XV and quadriliteral I-IV) from here!
Arabic students, in reality, will usually “accidentally” memorise this table because we refer back to it so often at the beginning—so don’t panic if it looks overwhelming!
(Hint: you’re probably going to want to save this verb table for future reference!)
Feel free to leave any questions below, مع السلامة!
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Salaam alaikum brother, thank you for posting this table. Very helpful. I love your website.
Jazakallahiran.
وعليكم السلام
Glad to hear you’re finding the blog useful!
(P.s. I’m a woman, so not “brother”!)