مُؤَنَّث
root: ء-ن-ث / passive participle of form II / definition: feminine
Most of us will have learnt that sound masculine plurals in Arabic have one of two endings: ـونَ when مرفوع, and ـينَ when منصوب or مجرور.
But the sound feminine plural ending (ـات) doesn’t change in spelling. Instead, we use either damma/dammatayn (ـاتُ/ـاتٌ) or kasra/kasratayn (ـاتِ/ـاتٍ) to indicate case.
When a sound feminine plural is مرفوع and definite (or the non-final word in an إضافة), we use a damma (ـاتُ).
And when it’s مرفوع and indefinite, we use dammatayn (ـاتٌ).
Examples:
تُريدُ المُديراتُ تَغييرَ السِّياسة
the female managers want to change the policy
هؤُلاءِ وَزيراتٌ مِن موريتانيا
these are female ministers from Mauritania
When a sound feminine plural is منصوب or مجرور and definite (or the non-final word in an إضافة), we use a kasra (ـاتِ).
And when it’s منصوب or مجرور and indefinite, we use kasratayn (ـاتٍ).
Examples:
تَعَرَّفنا على طالِباتِ الجامِعة
we met female students of the university
أَسَّسوا شَرِكاتٍ كَثيرةً في البَلَد
they set up many companies in the country
So a key thing to note is that we’ll never find fatha/fathatayn as the case ending for a sound feminine plural!
I hope this short post was useful! Don’t hesitate to leave any questions in the comments below.
!مع السلامة
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I read in my class that we will add Fatha ( َ)or Fatha tanween ( ً) on the object of the verb (مفعول بهِ) or for predicate of kanna verb (خبر كان وأخواتها ). If the object of the verb happens to be feminine sound plural, will it still not take fatha or fatah tanween (definite or indefinite)? I appreciate your analysis very much. Thanks in advance.
Hi, yes that’s right – the sound feminine plural will take either kasra or kasratayn in those contexts, rather than fatha or fathatayn!