Plurals

From Al-Duroos

Arabic has several ways of expressing nouns as plurals:

• Broken plurals
• Human sound masculine plurals
• Human sound feminine plurals

Contents 1 Broken plurals 2 Sound masculine plurals 3 Sound feminine plurals 4 Non-rational nouns 5 Links

Broken plurals

Broken plurals are formed by modifying the vowel pattern in the stem of the word.

Examples:

• رَجُل > رِجال (man)
• طالِب > طُلاّب (male student)

Sound masculine plurals

Sound masculine plurals keep the same stem, with the same vowel pattern. To form a plural, a suffix ending is attached to the word, either ين- or ون-.

Sound feminine plurals

Sound feminine plurals are formed by adding the ات- ending, which replaces the ta' marbuta (ة).

Examples:

• طالِبة > طالِبات (female student)

Non-rational nouns

Nonrational or non-human plurals are treated as if they were feminine singular nouns for choosing verb forms, adjective agreement, pronouns, etc. Thus, the هِيَ pronoun is used, as are the demonstratives هذِهِ and تِلكَ.

For example:

تِلكَ كُتُت - those books

Links

• Arabic Plural System