Personal pronouns In Arabic,
personal pronouns have 12 forms. In singular and plural, the 2nd and 3rd persons have separate
masculine and
feminine forms, while the 1st person does not. In the dual, there is no 1st person, and only a single form for each 2nd and 3rd person. Traditionally, the pronouns are listed in the order 3rd, 2nd, 1st. Informal Arabic tends to avoid the dual forms '
and ' . The feminine plural forms '
and ' are likewise avoided, except by speakers of conservative colloquial varieties that still possess separate feminine plural pronouns.
Enclitic pronouns The
enclitic forms of personal pronouns ( '''') are used both as accusative and genitive forms of the pronouns. As genitive forms they appear in the following contexts: • After the
construct state of nouns, where they have the meaning of possessive determiners, e.g. "my, your, his" • After prepositions, where they have the meaning of objects of the prepositions, e.g. "to me, to you, to him" As accusative forms they appear: • Attached to verbs, where they have the meaning of direct object pronouns, e.g. "me, you, him" • Attached to conjunctions and particles like '
"that ...", ' "because ...", '
"but ...", ' (topicalizing particle), where they have the meaning of subject pronouns, e.g. "because I ...", "because you ...", "because he ...". (These particles are known in Arabic as '
( "sisters of '".) Only the first person singular makes a distinction between the genitive and accusative function. As a possessive it takes the form
-ī while as an object form it has the form
-nī (e.g. ( '''' "you saw me"). Most of the enclitic forms are clearly related to the full personal pronouns.
Variant forms For all but the first person singular, the same forms are used regardless of the part of speech of the word attached to. In the third person masculine singular, ''
occurs after the vowels u
or a'' ('
), while ' occurs after
i or
y (''''). The same alternation occurs in the third person dual and plural. In the first person singular, however, the situation is more complicated. Specifically, '
"me" is attached to verbs, but ' "my" is attached to nouns. In the latter case, '
is attached to nouns whose construct state ends in a long vowel or diphthong (e.g. in the sound masculine plural and the dual), while ' is attached to nouns whose construct state ends in a short vowel, in which case that vowel is elided (e.g. in the sound feminine plural, as well as the singular and broken plural of most nouns). Furthermore, '
of the masculine sound plural is assimilated to ' before '
(presumably, ' of masculine defective
-an plurals is similarly assimilated to ''''). Examples: • From '
"book", pl ' (most of nouns in general). • From '''' "word" (nouns ending on ), pl or . • From '
"world"; ' "hospital" (nouns ending on ). • From nom. dual '
"teachers", acc./gen. dual ' (dual nouns) • From nom. pl. '
"teachers", acc./gen. pl. ' (regular plural nouns) • From pl. '''' "chosen" (regular plural nouns) • From '''' "judge" (active participle nouns ending on as nominative) • From '
"father", long construct form ' (long construct nouns) • From any nouns ending on '
, ' or '''' (more commonly loanwords). • From any nouns ending on '''' (more commonly loanwords). Prepositions use '
, even though in this case it has the meaning of "me" (rather than "my"). The "sisters of '" can use either form (e.g. '
or '), but the longer form (e.g. '''') is usually preferred. The second-person masculine plural past tense verb ending '
changes to the variant form ' before enclitic pronouns, e.g. '''' "you (masc. pl.) wrote it (masc.)".
Pronouns with prepositions Some very common prepositions — including the proclitic preposition '''' "to" (also used for indirect objects) — have irregular or unpredictable combining forms when the enclitic pronouns are added to them: In the above cases, when there are two combining forms, one is used with "... me" and the other with all other person/number/gender combinations. (More correctly, one occurs before vowel-initial pronouns and the other before consonant-initial pronouns, but in Classical Arabic, only '''' is vowel-initial. This becomes clearer in the spoken varieties, where various vowel-initial enclitic pronouns exist.) Note in particular: • '
"to" and ' "on" have irregular combining forms '
, '; but other pronouns with the same base form are regular, e.g. '''' "with". • '
"to" has an irregular combining form ', but '''' "in, with, by" is regular. • '
"from" and ' "on" double the final
n before ''''.
Less formal pronominal forms In a less formal Arabic, as in many spoken dialects, the endings
-ka, -ki and
-hu and many others have their final short vowel dropped, for example, كِتابُكَ
kitābuka would become كِتابُك
kitābuk for ease of pronunciation. This doesn't make a difference to the spelling as the diacritics used to represent short vowels are not usually written.
Demonstratives There are two
demonstratives ( ''''), near-
deictic ('this') and far-deictic ('that'): The dual forms are only used in very formal Arabic. Some of the demonstratives ('
, and ') should be pronounced with a long '
, although the unvocalised script is not written with alif (). Instead of an alif, they have the diacritic (dagger alif: '), which doesn't exist on Arabic keyboards and is seldom written, even in vocalised Arabic. Qur'anic Arabic has another demonstrative, normally followed by a noun in a genitive construct and meaning 'owner of': Note that the demonstrative and relative pronouns were originally built on this word. '
, for example, was originally composed from the prefix ' 'this' and the masculine accusative singular '
; similarly, ' was composed from '
, an infixed syllable ', and the
clitic suffix '''' 'you'. These combinations had not yet become completely fixed in Qur'anic Arabic and other combinations sometimes occurred, e.g. '
, '. Similarly, the relative pronoun '
was originally composed based on the genitive singular ', and the old Arabic grammarians noted the existence of a separate nominative plural form '''' in the speech of the
Hudhayl tribe in Qur'anic times. This word also shows up in
Hebrew, e.g. masculine
zeh (cf. ''
), feminine zot
(cf. ), plural eleh
(cf. '').
Relative pronoun The
relative pronoun is declined as follows: Note that the relative pronoun agrees in gender, number and case, with the noun it modifies—as opposed to the situation in other inflected languages such as
Latin and
German, where the gender and
number agreement is with the modified noun, but the case marking follows the usage of the relative pronoun in the embedded clause (as in formal English "the man who saw me" vs. "the man whom I saw"). When the relative pronoun serves a function other than the subject of the embedded clause, a
resumptive pronoun is required: '''', literally "the man who I spoke with him". The relative pronoun is normally omitted entirely when an indefinite noun is modified by a relative clause: '''' "a man that I spoke with", literally "a man I spoke with him".
Colloquial varieties The above system is mostly unchanged in the colloquial varieties, other than the loss of the dual forms and (for most varieties) of the feminine plural. Some of the more notable changes: • The third-person '
variants disappear. On the other hand, the first person ' variation is preserved exactly (including the different circumstances in which these variants are used), and new variants appear for many forms. For example, in
Egyptian Arabic, the second person feminine singular appears either as '
or ' depending on various factors (e.g. the phonology of the preceding word); likewise, the third person masculine singular appears variously as '
, ', or '''' (no ending, but stress is moved onto the preceding vowel, which is lengthened). • In many varieties, the
indirect object forms, which appear in Classical Arabic as separate words (e.g. '
"to me", ' 'to him'), become fused onto the verb, following a direct object. These same varieties generally develop a
circumfix for negation (from Classical '''' 'not ... a thing', composed of two separate words). This can lead to complicated
agglutinative constructs, such as
Egyptian Arabic 'he didn't write it (fem.) to me'. (Egyptian Arabic in particular has many variant pronominal affixes used in different circumstances, and very intricate
morphophonemic rules leading to a large number of complex alternations, depending on the particular affixes involved, the way they are put together, and whether the preceding verb ends in a vowel, a single consonant, or two consonants.) • Other varieties instead use a separate Classical
pseudo-pronoun '''' for direct objects (but in
Hijazi Arabic the resulting construct fuses with a preceding verb). • Affixation of dual and sound plural nouns has largely vanished. Instead, all varieties possess a separate preposition with the meaning of "of", which replaces certain uses of the
construct genitive (to varying degrees, depending on the particular variety). In
Moroccan Arabic, the word is
dyal (also
d- before a noun), e.g.
l-kitab dyal-i "my book", since the construct-state genitive is mostly unproductive.
Egyptian Arabic has
bitā‘ , which agrees in gender and number with the preceding noun (feminine
bitā‘it/bita‘t, plural
bitū‘ ). In Egyptian Arabic, the construct-state genitive is still productive, hence either
kitāb-i or
il-kitāb bitā‘-i can be used for "my book" [the difference between them is similar to the difference between 'my book' and 'the book is mine'], but only
il-mu‘allimūn bitū‘-i "my teachers". • The declined relative pronoun has vanished. In its place is an indeclinable particle, usually
illi or similar. • Various forms of the demonstrative pronouns occur, usually shorter than the Classical forms. For example, Moroccan Arabic uses
ha l- "this",
dak l-/dik l-/duk l- "that" (masculine/feminine/plural). Egyptian Arabic is unusual in that the demonstrative follows the noun, e.g.
il-kitāb da "this book",
il-binti di "this girl". • Some of the independent pronouns have slightly different forms compared with their Classical forms. For example, usually forms similar to
inta, inti or
enta, enty "you (masc./fem. sg.)" occur in place of ''
, and (n)iḥna/eḥna
"we" occurs in place of ''. ==Numerals==