In short

English verbs come in two kinds. Some grab their object bare - “I entered the room”, “I thanked him” - and some need a preposition first - “I looked at the picture”, “I listened to the news”. Arabic makes the same split, with its own names for it: a verb that reaches its object directly is مُتَعَدٍّ, one that cannot is لازِم. The two languages draw the line in different places, and that mismatch is the whole of this lesson.

There is nothing to derive here. Which preposition a verb demands is part of its dictionary entry, like the gender of a German noun; you learn بَحَثَ عَنْ and حَصَلَ عَلى as two-word units and never separate them again. What is mechanical is what happens next: a preposition always pulls the following noun into the genitive, so the complement is مَجْرور with a kasra, not مَنْصوب with a fatḥa. Get the pair right and the ending comes free.

The rule

1. لازِم and مُتَعَدٍّ: can the verb hold an object by itself? A فِعْل مُتَعَدٍّ - the word means “passing over” - passes over to a مَفْعول بِهِ with nothing in between, and that object takes the accusative you met in lesson 29: قَرَأَ الوَلَدُ الكِتابَ، شَرِبْتُ القَهْوَةَ. A فِعْل لازِم - “sticking” - has no direct object at all; the action stays with its doer: ذَهَبَ المُديرُ، جَلَسْنا، نامَ الطِّفْلُ.

The quick test is the question ماذا؟ “what?”. If ماذا قَرَأْتَ؟ has a sensible answer that can follow the verb bare, with a fatḥa, the verb is مُتَعَدٍّ. Dictionaries mark the class for you, by printing either the preposition or a pronoun object: بَحَثَ عَنْ، ساعَدَهُ.

2. The third case, which is what this lesson is really about. Plenty of لازِم verbs do have something to say beyond the subject - they simply cannot reach it bare. They reach it through a preposition instead, and the tradition calls this تَعْدِيَةُ الفِعْلِ بِحَرْفِ الجَرّ, “making the verb transitive by means of a preposition”. The preposition plus its noun form one unit, الجارُّ والمَجْرور, and the noun inside it is genitive:

• بَحَثَ الرَّجُلُ عَنْ عَمَلٍ. - the man looked for work
• اِعْتَمَدْتُ عَلى صَديقي. - I relied on my friend
• تَحْتاجُ الأُسْرَةُ إِلى بَيْتٍ أَكْبَرَ. - the family needs a bigger house

Notice the ending in each: عَمَلٍ with tanwīn kasra, صَديقي with an invisible kasra on the ق, hidden under the ـي, أَكْبَرَ with a fatḥa because أَكْبَر is a diptote (lesson 41). The preposition governs the noun exactly as it would after a plain في or مِنْ; the verb changes nothing.

3. The preposition belongs to the dictionary entry, not to logic. English has the same phenomenon - you rely on, listen to, think about - and the two systems do not line up. “Look for” is بَحَثَ عَنْ but “look at” is نَظَرَ إِلى; one English “answer” is أَجابَ عَنْ سُؤالٍ but another is رَدَّ عَلى رِسالَةٍ. So: memorise pairs, and never translate the English preposition.

Worse, swapping the preposition can change the verb’s meaning outright. رَغِبَ في is “to want”; رَغِبَ عَنْ is “to turn away from, to want no part of”. خافَ مِنَ الكَلْبِ is “he was afraid of the dog”; خافَ عَلى ابْنِهِ is “he feared for his son”.

4. Each preposition does have a flavour - use it as a hook, not as a predictor. عَنْ is distance and “about”; عَلى is weight resting on a surface, hence leaning on someone and getting hold of something; إِلى is an arrow pointing at a goal; بِ is contact and the instrument in your hand; في is being inside a domain; مِنْ is the source, and the thing you back away from. These pictures make a pair easy to keep; they will not let you guess it.

5. Trap A - Arabic puts in a preposition where English has none. These are the verbs that make learners write a fatḥa out of habit. The ones to fix now:

• بَحَثَ عَنْ “to look for” - the thing searched for is never a bare object.
• سَأَلَ عَنْ “to ask about” a topic (but the person asked is direct - see point 7).
• أَجابَ عَنْ “to answer” a question.
• رَدَّ عَلى “to reply to” a letter, a call, a remark.
• نَظَرَ إِلى “to look at”; اِسْتَمَعَ إِلى “to listen to”.
• اِحْتاجَ إِلى “to need”. English “need” takes a bare object; the ordinary Arabic pair is with إِلى (a bare accusative is recorded, but it is rare in modern prose).

6. Trap B - Arabic takes a bare object where English needs a preposition. The mirror-image error, and just as common:

• دَخَلَ الغُرْفَةَ “he entered / went into the room” - not في.
• شَكَرَ المُعَلِّمَةَ “he thanked the teacher” - the person is the object; what you are grateful for comes afterwards with عَلى.
• ساعَدَ جارَهُ “he helped his neighbour”; the task helped with takes عَلى or في.
• اِنْتَظَرَ الحافِلَةَ “he waited for the bus” - the “for” of English is not translated.
• Two more of the same shape: حَضَرَ الاِجْتِماعَ، قابَلَ المُديرَ.

7. Some verbs take both at once: a person direct, a topic with a preposition. This is where سَأَلَ lives. The human being questioned is the direct object; what you asked about is عَنْ + genitive:

• سَأَلْتُ الطَّبيبَ عَنِ الدَّواءِ. - I asked the doctor about the medicine.
• شَكَرْتُ الجيرانَ عَلى مُساعَدَتِهِمْ. - I thanked the neighbours for their help.
• ساعَدَ الأَبُ ابْنَهُ عَلَى الحَلِّ. - The father helped his son with the solution.

أَجابَ splits the same way: أَجابَ الأُسْتاذَ is “he answered the professor” (a person, bare), while أَجابَ عَنِ السُّؤالِ is “he answered the question” (a thing, with عَنْ).

8. Pronouns: the seam tells the two constructions apart. A direct object attaches to the verb in the accusative set of lesson 29; a prepositional complement attaches to the preposition in the genitive set of lessons 7 and 20:

• اِنْتَظَرَني “he waited for me” against بَحَثَ عَنّي “he looked for me”.
• ساعَدَنا “he helped us” against اِعْتَمَدَ عَلَيْنا “he relied on us”.
• شَكَرَهُ “he thanked him” against رَدَّ عَلَيْهِ “he answered him”.

The first person is the clearest signal: as a direct object it is ـني (اِنْتَظَرَني), after a preposition a plain ـي (بي، لي، مِنّي، عَنّي، إِلَيَّ، عَلَيَّ). Two seam habits carry over unchanged from lesson 16: مِنْ and عَنْ double their ن before ـي and ـنا, and عَلى and إِلى turn their ى back into ي before any suffix (عَلَيْكَ، إِلَيْهِ), fusing into عَلَيَّ، إِلَيَّ in the first person. And ـهُ becomes ـهِ after a kasra or a ي: بِهِ، فيهِ، إِلَيْهِ، عَلَيْهِ, but عَنْهُ، مِنْهُ.

9. The linking vowel before الـ. The article begins with هَمْزَةُ الوَصْل, which is not pronounced once anything precedes it. That leaves the sukūn of عَنْ or مِنْ colliding with the vowelless لـ of الـ, or with the doubled sun letter that replaces it - two sukūns in a row, which Arabic will not allow - so the preposition borrows a vowel: عَنْ + الطَّريقِ is written and said عَنِ الطَّريقِ, and مِنْ takes a fatḥa instead - مِنَ الاِمْتِحانِ. In a full sentence: سَأَلْتُهُ عَنِ الطَّريقِ.

بِ and لِ need nothing - they simply lean on the article (بِالقَلَمِ، لِلْمُديرِ). في، عَلى and إِلى shorten their long vowel in speech before the article; careful vocalization shows this by writing a short vowel on the last letter - a fatḥa on the ى in إِلَى المَحَطَّةِ، عَلَى الطّاوِلَةِ, a kasra on the ي in فِي البَيْتِ - while the letters themselves never change.

10. What this lesson leaves alone. Arabic has a second way of making a verb transitive: rebuild it on Form II or Form IV, so that خَرَجَ “he went out” yields أَخْرَجَ “he took out”. That is تَعْدِيَة by pattern rather than by preposition, and it is lessons 46 and 47. The bare accusative noun that says why you did something is المَفْعولُ لِأَجْلِهِ, lesson 60. And when a whole clause follows the preposition (أَرْغَبُ في أَنْ أُسافِرَ), you need أَنْ and the subjunctive: lesson 34, with the verbal noun in lesson 54.

Forms & patterns

The core government list, grouped by preposition. The root and the form number are there so you can see that the government has nothing to do with either: Form VIII verbs alone turn up under three different prepositions.

The English traps in the other direction: bare accusative in Arabic, preposition in English.

One verb, two governments, two meanings. This is why the preposition is part of the entry.

The pronoun seams. Only six persons are printed; أَنْتِ, the dual and the feminine plural (عَنْكِ، عَنْكُما، إِلَيْهِنَّ، بِكُنَّ) follow the pattern of lesson 7.

And the two seams side by side, so the accusative and the genitive suffix do not blur together.

Examples

Common mistakes

• أَبْحَثُ الكِتابَ -> أَبْحَثُ عَنِ الكِتابِ - in the sense “look for”, بَحَثَ reaches its object only through عَنْ, and the noun after a preposition is مَجْرور, so it is a kasra and never a fatḥa.
• أَنْظُرُ الصّورَةَ -> أَنْظُرُ إِلَى الصّورَةِ - “look at” is نَظَرَ إِلى; نَظَرَ في is a different pair, “to look into, to examine”. A bare object after نَظَرَ is among the most audible of learner errors.
• دَخَلْتُ في الغُرْفَةِ -> دَخَلْتُ الغُرْفَةَ - the mirror error. دَخَلَ is مُتَعَدٍّ by itself; the في is imported from English “into” and does not belong in front of a place.
• اِنْتَظَرْتُ لَكَ -> اِنْتَظَرْتُكَ - “wait for” is one verb in Arabic. The pronoun goes onto the verb in the accusative set, not onto a preposition.
• شَكَرْتُ لَكَ عَلى مُساعَدَتِكَ -> شَكَرْتُكَ عَلى مُساعَدَتِكَ - the person thanked is a direct object; عَلى introduces what you are grateful for. (Classical Arabic also allows شَكَرَ لَهُ, and formal writing still uses it, but the ordinary modern construction is the direct one.)
• أَحْتاجُ المُساعَدَةَ -> أَحْتاجُ إِلَى المُساعَدَةِ - English “need” takes a bare object; the pair to write is اِحْتاجَ إِلى. Same for the noun: بِحاجَةٍ إِلَى المُساعَدَةِ.
• أُفَكِّرُ عَنِ المَوْضوعِ -> أُفَكِّرُ فِي المَوْضوعِ - “think about” translates preposition for preposition into a wrong pair. فَكَّرَ lives inside في.
• حَصَلْتُ الجائِزَةَ -> حَصَلْتُ عَلَى الجائِزَةِ - حَصَلَ without عَلى is a different verb meaning “to happen, to occur”: حَصَلَ خَطَأٌ “a mistake occurred”.
• سَأَلْتُهُ عَنْ الطَّريقِ -> سَأَلْتُهُ عَنِ الطَّريقِ - the sukūn of عَنْ cannot meet the هَمْزَةُ الوَصْل of الـ, so it takes a kasra. مِنْ does the same with a fatḥa: مِنَ البَيْتِ.
• يَعْتَمِدُ عَلَيْهُ / سَأَلَ عَنْي -> يَعْتَمِدُ عَلَيْهِ / سَأَلَ عَنّي - ـهُ turns into ـهِ after a ي or a kasra, and عَنْ and مِنْ double their ن in front of ـي and ـنا.

Tips

• Never put a verb alone on a flashcard. The card says بَحَثَ عَنْ, and the back carries a phrase: أَبْحَثُ عَنْ عَمَلٍ. A verb learned without its preposition has to be learned twice.
• Learn Trap B as one block - دَخَلَ، شَكَرَ، ساعَدَ، اِنْتَظَرَ، حَضَرَ، قابَلَ. It is short, it covers most of the damage, and everything on it feels wrong to an English ear.
• When you replace a noun with a pronoun, ask one question first: is it hanging off the verb or off a preposition? اِنْتَظَرَني but بَحَثَ عَنّي - the same ـي, but one hangs off the verb and one off the preposition.
• Say عَنِ الـ and مِنَ الـ aloud inside whole phrases until the linking vowel is automatic. You will never hear it as a rule, only as a rhythm.
• Collect pairs from real text, not from lists. One news paragraph a day, underlining every verb plus جارّ ومَجْرور, builds a better inventory than any table.
• Watch the pairs built on one root: اِتَّصَلَ بِ “to contact” but وَصَلَ إِلى “to arrive at”, both from و-ص-ل. A different form is a different dictionary entry, with its own preposition.
• Do not worry yet about what happens when a whole clause follows the preposition. Nouns first; أَرْغَبُ في أَنْ أُسافِرَ waits for lesson 34.