Reference: Arabic Verb Forms Table

جَدْوَل

root: ج-د-ل / noun / plural: جَداوِل / definition: chart, table

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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 (we’ll come back to that another day)

• 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 roots (you can find a table of verb forms for four-letter 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

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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