In short

Every sentence you have built so far has been a nominal sentence - a subject and a predicate with no verb at all: البَيْتُ كَبيرٌ، هٰذِهِ سَيّارَتي. This lesson gives you the verb. Arabic runs on two tenses only, and the one called المُضارِع is the one that does the present: أَكْتُبُ “I write”, نَدْرُسُ “we study”, يَشْرَبونَ “they drink”. Learn its thirteen forms and you can say what anybody is doing.

The machinery is unusually tidy. A letter in front of the verb tells you the person - أ for “I”, نـ for “we”, تـ for “you”, يـ for “he” - and an ending at the back tells you the number and the gender. English needs a separate pronoun and an auxiliary to say “she is writing”; Arabic says تَكْتُبُ and is finished. The one thing you cannot work out for yourself is the vowel in the middle of the stem, and for that there is a dictionary.

The rule

1. One Arabic tense, two English ones. المُضارِع covers both the habit and the thing happening right now. أَدْرُسُ العَرَبِيَّةَ is “I study Arabic” (every week, as a fact about me) and “I am studying Arabic” (at this moment, with the book open). Arabic has no separate progressive conjugation and needs none - a word like الآنَ “now” or كُلَّ يَوْمٍ “every day” supplies the difference when it matters. Do not go looking for an equivalent of “am/is/are + -ing”; there isn’t one, and that is one whole English tense you never have to translate.

2. The prefix carries the person. Four letters, glued to the front of the stem, and in Form I each carries a fatḥa:

• أَـ = I - أَكْتُبُ
• نَـ = we - نَكْتُبُ
• تَـ = you (any number, any gender), plus “she” and “they two” (f.) - تَكْتُبُ
• يَـ = he, plus “they” (m.) and “they” (f.pl.) - يَكْتُبُ

This is the opposite of the past tense you meet in lesson 18, where everything happens at the back of the word. Here you read the front of the verb first.

3. The suffix carries number and gender. Five of the thirteen cells take no suffix at all and simply end in a ḍamma - four shapes, because تَكْتُبُ serves two of them: أَكْتُبُ، نَكْتُبُ، تَكْتُبُ، يَكْتُبُ. The rest add one of four endings:

• ـينَ - you, one woman: تَكْتُبينَ
• ـانِ - any two people: تَكْتُبانِ، يَكْتُبانِ
• ـونَ - a group of men (or a mixed group): تَكْتُبونَ، يَكْتُبونَ
• ـْنَ - a group of women: تَكْتُبْنَ، يَكْتُبْنَ

Prefix plus suffix together identify the cell. تَـ alone is ambiguous; تَـ + ـينَ is not.

4. تـ does the heaviest work, and it is genuinely ambiguous. تَكْتُبُ, with nothing on the end, is both “you write” (to one man) and “she writes”. Nothing in the form distinguishes them - the sentence does. If the subject is expressed, you can see it: سَلْمى تَكْتُبُ is unmistakably “Salma writes”. If it is not, the person you are speaking to is normally “you” and anybody else is “she”. Arabic tolerates this because in a real conversation the two never collide. Get used to asking, every time you meet a تَـ verb, “you - or she?”

5. The stem vowel is dictionary information. Between the second and third root letters of a Form I verb sits a single short vowel, and for the commonest past shape, فَعَلَ, it is not predictable. كَتَبَ and ذَهَبَ look identical in the past; their imperfects are يَكْتُبُ and يَذْهَبُ. This is why an Arabic dictionary always tells you the imperfect vowel - printing the verb twice, or the bare vowel in brackets - and why you must learn a verb as a pair - كَتَبَ - يَكْتُبُ - and never as a single word. Only three vowels are possible (ـُ، ـَ، ـِ), and two hints narrow the guess: a verb with a kasra in the past (فَهِمَ، شَرِبَ) almost always takes a fatḥa in the present (يَفْهَمُ، يَشْرَبُ), and a throat letter as second or third radical often pulls a fatḥa too (ذَهَبَ - يَذْهَبُ). Everything else you simply look up. The eight verbs tabled below carry you through A1.

Note also that the first radical of the stem carries a sukūn throughout: يَكْـتُبُ، يَشْـرَبُ، يَجْـلِسُ. The stem never changes shape across the thirteen cells - only the vowel that sits in it, once, forever.

6. The final ـُ and the ن are a mood, not decoration. The plain form printed here is called المُضارِعُ المَرْفوعُ, the indicative, and it is marked in two ways: by the ḍamma on the last letter (أَكْتُبُ), or, in the forms that take an ending, by the ن of ـينَ / ـانِ / ـونَ. Both markers are removable. After certain particles the ḍamma turns into a fatḥa and those three ن’s fall off altogether - يَكْتُبَ، تَكْتُبي، يَكْتُبوا; that is the subjunctive of lesson 33. Another set of particles drops the ḍamma to a sukūn instead - يَكْتُبْ - and that is the jussive of lesson 35. You do not need either yet; you need to know that the ن you are learning is information and not padding, so that dropping it later feels like a rule and not like a typo.

Two cells are exempt: تَكْتُبْنَ and يَكْتُبْنَ. Their ـنَ is the feminine-plural pronoun itself, not a mood marker, so these two forms are the same in every mood and never change.

7. The pronoun is optional - and never carries the person. Because the prefix already says who, أَكْتُبُ on its own is a complete sentence, “I write”. Adding أَنا is possible, but it is emphasis or contrast, not grammar: أَنا أَكْتُبُ وهُوَ يَقْرَأُ “I write and he reads”. What you may never do is put a pronoun in front of a verb that disagrees with it. أَنا يَكْتُبُ is not a sentence; يـ marks a third person and can never mean “I”.

When the subject is a noun placed before the verb, as in الطُّلّابُ يَدْرُسونَ, the verb agrees with it fully, exactly as above. Arabic also likes to put the verb first, and that order changes the agreement rules - that is lesson 19, and until then keep your subject in front.

8. Three ready-made frames. Three of the most useful things a beginner says - want, must, can - are built the same way in Arabic: a first verb, then the particle أَنْ, then a second verb whose ḍamma has become a fatḥa. Learn these as fixed blocks now and take the grammar later (lessons 33 and 34):

• أُريدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبَ - “I want to go”

• يَجِبُ أَنْ نَدْرُسَ - “we must study”

• يُمْكِنُني أَنْ أَكْتُبَ - “I can write”

Three practical points. First, the two verbs carry the same person: أُريدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبَ, but تُريدُ أَنْ تَذْهَبَ, نُريدُ أَنْ نَذْهَبَ. Second, يَجِبُ is impersonal - it does not change for person; you move the person onto the second verb: يَجِبُ أَنْ تَدْرُسَ، يَجِبُ أَنْ يَدْرُسوا. Third, يُمْكِنُ needs an attached pronoun (lesson 7) to say whose ability it is: يُمْكِنُني، يُمْكِنُكَ، يُمْكِنُها.

You may notice that أُريدُ and يُمْكِنُ take a ḍamma on the prefix, not the fatḥa of rule 2. That is because they are not Form I verbs. The system behind that is lesson 46; for now the frames are vocabulary.

9. What is deliberately not here. Verbs whose root contains و or ي (قالَ، مَشى، وَصَلَ) reshape their stem and are lessons 50-51. Verbs of the derived forms (دَرَّسَ، اسْتَقْبَلَ) build different stems and are 46-48. Both keep exactly the prefixes and suffixes of this lesson, which is why learning them here pays for itself many times over. Negating a present verb with لا is lesson 23; turning it into a future with سَـ / سَوْفَ is lesson 24; giving an order is lesson 36.

Forms & patterns

The full thirteen cells of the indicative, on the sound Form I verb كَتَبَ - يَكْتُبُ.

The same thirteen taken apart, so you can see that only the frame changes:

Eight Form I verbs to carry you through A1. The middle column is the one to memorize; the third column is the vowel you cannot guess.

Three of them in the nine cells you will use most. أَكَلَ is included because its first radical is a hamza: everything is regular except the first person, where أَ + أْ collapses into a madda - آكُلُ, not أَأْكُلُ.

The dual rows are left out of this last table only to keep it readable; they behave exactly as in the كَتَبَ paradigm above (تَذْهَبانِ، يَذْهَبانِ، تَجْلِسانِ، يَأْكُلانِ).

The three frames. أُريدُ is printed across its persons because you will need all of them; its own stem is irregular in ways that wait for lesson 50, so take the shapes as they are.

Examples

Common mistakes

• أَنا يَكْتُبُ -> أَنا أَكْتُبُ - the prefix, not the pronoun, carries the person, and يـ marks a third person, never “I”. The pronoun must match the verb or be left out.
• أَنْتِ تَكْتُبُ -> أَنْتِ تَكْتُبينَ - the feminine singular “you” must have ـينَ. Without it the form has silently become “you (m.)” or “she”.
• هِيَ يَدْرُسُ -> هِيَ تَدْرُسُ - “she” takes the تـ prefix, not يـ. The يـ of “he” is one of the commonest beginner slips because English “he/she” sit side by side.
• أَنا أَذْهُبُ -> أَنا أَذْهَبُ - the stem vowel of ذَهَبَ is a fatḥa. It cannot be derived from the past tense; it is learned with the verb.
• يَجْلُسُ -> يَجْلِسُ - and جَلَسَ takes a kasra. Same past-tense shape as كَتَبَ and ذَهَبَ, three different stem vowels.
• أَأْكُلُ -> آكُلُ - the prefix hamza and the root hamza merge into a madda in the first person of أَكَلَ. Every other cell is regular: تَأْكُلُ، يَأْكُلونَ.
• يَكْتُبوا (as a plain statement) -> يَكْتُبونَ - the ن is the mark of the indicative. The ن-less form is real Arabic, but it belongs to lessons 33 and 35.
• نَحْنُ يَدْرُسونَ -> نَحْنُ نَدْرُسُ - “we” is نـ with no ending at all. Do not let the plural meaning pull a plural suffix onto the verb.
• الطّالِباتُ يَكْتُبونَ -> الطّالِباتُ يَكْتُبْنَ - a group of women has its own ending ـْنَ. ـونَ is for men and for mixed groups.
• أُريدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبُ -> أُريدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبَ - inside the frame the second verb ends in a fatḥa, never a ḍamma. Memorize the block whole and the ending comes with it.
• أُريدُ أَنْ يَذْهَبَ (meaning “I want to go”) -> أُريدُ أَنْ أَذْهَبَ - both verbs carry the same person. As written, your sentence means “I want him to go”.
• يُمْكِنُ أَنْ أَكْتُبَ (meaning “I can write”) -> يُمْكِنُني أَنْ أَكْتُبَ - يُمْكِنُ needs an attached pronoun to say whose ability is in question.

Tips

• Learn every verb as a pair, past and present, out loud: كَتَبَ - يَكْتُبُ، ذَهَبَ - يَذْهَبُ. A single word is half a verb, and it is the half that cannot be guessed.
• Drill the eight verbs in three blocks by their vowel - u, a, i - rather than alphabetically. The vowel sticks to a group far better than to a list.
• Chant one verb straight down the five singular cells until it is reflex: أَكْتُبُ، تَكْتُبُ، تَكْتُبينَ، يَكْتُبُ، تَكْتُبُ. Add نَكْتُبُ and the four plurals next; leave the duals last.
• Read the front of a verb before the back. The prefix answers “who?” in one letter: أَـ and نَـ settle the cell outright, يَـ narrows thirteen possibilities to four and تَـ to seven.
• When you see تَـ, ask “you or she?” and let the subject or the conversation decide. This ambiguity is permanent - it is not something you will later learn to resolve inside the word.
• Keep writing the final ḍamma even though a speaker stopping at the end of a sentence will not pronounce it, because of the pausal form. It is the mood, and in a few lessons you will be changing it on purpose.
• Do not try to build “I am writing” out of separate pieces. One Arabic form covers both English presents, so the mental work here is subtraction, not addition.
• Take أُريدُ أَنْ، يَجِبُ أَنْ and يُمْكِنُني أَنْ as three unanalysed blocks, and slot any verb you know behind them with a fatḥa on the end. That single trick buys you most of what an A1 speaker needs to say.