سَجّادة
root: س-ج-د / noun / plural: سَجاجيد / definition: carpet
On the weekend, I returned from an expectation-exceeding week-long stay in beautiful Baku, Azerbaijan. And I would jump on the five-and-a-half hour flight again in a heartbeat, even just to get my hands on the perfect xalça that I didn’t have time to shop around for.
But back from Baku, we have some grammar to get stuck into.
In my post about the verb form table, I mentioned that the imperative (a.k.a. command) forms of form I verbs vary. In this post, we’ll be specifically focusing on sound form I verbs.
So, to transform a sound form I verb into an imperative, we:
- start with the present tense مجزوم form—like تَفْعَلْ for أنتَ, or تَفْعَلي for أنتِ, or تَفْعَلوا for أنتم
- remove the تَـ at the start (which gives us an intermediate form like فْعَلْ / فْعَلي / فْعَلوا)
- we know we can’t have a word beginning with a vowel-less letter (a letter with sukoon), so we need to add an alif (without a hamza!) at the start (افْعَلْ / افْعَلي / افْعَلوا)
Okay, so here’s where we get the variation: some sound form I imperatives have a kasra on the initial alif whilst others have a damma. But it’s quite simple to work out which to use!
It all depends on the vowel on the second root letter in the present tense.
The rule is:
- if the verb has a fatha or kasra on the second root letter in the present tense (like يذهَب or يرجِع), the alif at the start of the imperative will carry a kasra
- if the verb has a damma on the second root letter in the present tense (like يكتُب), the alif will carry a damma
Examples? Here they are:
!اِذهَبْ
go! (m. sing.)
!اِدفَعا
pay! push! (dual)
!اِرجِعي
return! go back! (f. sing.)
!اِقبِضْ
grab! (m. sing.)
!اُكتُبوا
write! (m. pl.)
!اُدرُسنَ
study! (f. pl.)
There we have it for those sound form I imperatives! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.
And if you’re interested in why form I verbs have different vowels on their second root letter, check out this post!
!مع السلامة
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Thanks for the clear presentation! I remember our Arabic teach saying the imperatives were difficult and we had to wait for a long time before learning them. But the sound ones aren’t that bad. Other ones are also OK-ish, you just have to memorize some extra details.
I do have a question though: would it be wrong to put a hamza on the alif of the imperative here? The book I use doesn’t really spend attention on this but some of these helper alifs seem to always take hamza, like the form IV past tense, and some don’t, like the imperative here and forms VII and up..
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to write this post!
Hi Thomas 😄 The only imperatives that have the alif with the hamza are form IV imperatives; imperatives for the other forms have the alif alone (forms VII-X) or no alif at all (forms II-VI). Likewise, the only past tense verbs beginning with the alif and hamza are the form IV verbs, the others (forms VII-X) only have an alif.