Gender
The Arabic language has two genders: masculine and feminine.
رجل rajul man
In principle, a masculine word ends with a nunation, symbolized with ٌ which is transliterated as -un. For the example above, it would written as رجلٌ rajulun. However, in spoken arabic, this ending is usually ignored and you will only listen rajul.
If a noun ends with ta marbuta ة, it is most likely feminine. Whenever a standalone word ends with ة, the letter "t" is not pronounced but only "a" instead and is transliterated as -ah.
خزانة HizAnah cupboard
Officially, the nunation has to be added to these words as well resulting in HizAnatun instead of خزانةٌ HizAnah. But again, in spoken Arabic, this ending is ignored.
Words related to people always take their natural gender, for example
أم umm mother
is feminine, although the word does not end with ة. Most of the city and country names as well as paired body parts are feminine.
Some words have a masculine and feminine form, for example
| Arabic Masculine | Arabic Feminine | English |
|---|---|---|
| صديق Sadeeq | صديقة Sadeeqah | friend (m/f) |
| معلم mu3allim | معلم mu3allimah | teacher (m/f) |
Exercises
Write down the masculine and feminine form of the following nouns
a) student
b) physician
c) engineer
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|
| طالبة | طالب |
| طبيبة | طبيب |
| مهندسة | مهندس |
Vocabularies
| Arabic | Translation |
|---|---|
| أم | mother |
| خزانة | cupboard, cabinet |
| معلم | teacher |
| مهندس | engineer |
| طالب | student |
| طبيب | physician |