One-Letter Imperatives in Arabic

أَناقة

root: ء-ن-ق / noun / definition: elegance, grace

Modelling is tough work, I thought as I posed as a muse for my photographer friend who was practising using her new camera. And by posing, what I mean is that I was walking through Central London in the evening at 0.25x speed with an expression of pseudo-fascination and banking on the 1 in 360 chance that she’ll capture my good angle.

I accidentally flung a lid across a busy shop whilst I was testing out my hand modelling skills by “elegantly” opening a tin of tea leaves. Have some decorum, I whispered to myself—I’m just not sure I possess the grace that the job calls for.

Anyway.

You didn’t come here to read my modelling diary, so I’ll give you what you really want: a tasty bit of Arabic grammar.

In Arabic, we don’t usually see one-letter words like we do in English, with “I” and “a”.

(I just went through the English alphabet in my head to see if there are any more… there’s not. You should know, you’re a linguist! my mum would say, as she often does, thinking that every linguist has memorised the entire dictionary and has instant recall abilities. But these two single-letter words occur very frequently, so excuse me for my hesitation.)

But even though they’re not common in Arabic, one-letter words do occur—and it’s in the form of imperatives.

Well, certain types of imperatives. Imperatives from some doubly weak roots.

We looked at the different types of roots here, but to summarise:

assimilated roots have و or ي as their first letter
hollow roots have و or ي as their middle letter
defective roots have و or ي as their last letter
hamzated roots have ء as any one of their letters

…and all of these are considered weak roots.

A doubly weak root is one that has two of these “weaknesses”. For example, ن-و-ي is doubly weak as it’s both hollow and defective. (And there’s a triply weak one at the bottom of the list below!)

So let’s take a look at some one-letter imperatives and what roots and verbs they’re derived from:

نِ

meaning: intend! make up your mind!

root: ن-و-ي

root type: hollow and defective

verb: نَوى / يَنوي

(And نِ is also the imperative of the verb وَنى / يَني (to tire of doing something)!)

رَ

meaning: see!

root: ر-ء-ي

root type: hamzated and defective

verb: رَأى / يَرى

قِ

meaning: protect!

root: و-ق-ي

root type: assimilated and defective

verb: وَقى / يَقي

(We can see this imperative used here in the Qur’an with a following object pronoun: قِنا, protect us.)

عِ

meaning: beware!

root: و-ع-ي

root type: assimilated and defective

verb: وَعى / يَعي

لِ

meaning: be near! govern!

root: و-ل-ي

root type: assimilated and defective

verb: وَلِيَ / يَلي

فِ

meaning: fulfil!

root: و-ف-ي

root type: assimilated and defective

verb: وَلِيَ / يَلي

إِ

meaning: promise!

root: و-ء-ي

root type: assimilated, hamzated, and defective

verb: وَأى / يَئي

Note that all of these single-letter imperatives are for the masculine singular, أنتَ. For other pronouns, other letters are added as usual!

For example, ني (intend!) for أنتِ, and لُوا (govern!) for أنتم.

There are some doubly weak roots that don’t form single-letter imperatives though.

The imperative of the verb أَتى / يَأتي (to come) from the hamzated and defective root ء-ت-ي is اِئتِ, for instance.

Ahh, I’ve missed writing about grammar. I feel like I’ve been writing about vocabulary a lot recently, but grammar is what really lifts my spirits—as odd as that is. I think I just really like order.

And perhaps not modelling.

!إلى اللقاء