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Every one who is studying Arabic, even the very beginners, know that in Arabic nouns have I’raab (إعراب). In English we call it declension of nouns. But what is I’raab or declension?
Many people have problem wrapping their minds around the concept of I’raab. They may have memorized the conjugation charts but don’t understand the concept behind it completely.
And many people think that I’raab or declension is peculiar to Arabic only.
Do you know that English language also has I’raab?
Can you give an example of I’raab in English?
Let’s say I want to introduce my son to you. I will say “He is Umar”.
Then I want to tell you more about him. I may say things like “His toys are all over the house” and “I saw him playing in the garden”.
He… Him… His
This is an example of I’raab or declension of nouns, pronouns in this case.
When I say “He is Umar”, he is the subject of the sentence, so he remains he which is a nominative case. But when I say “I saw him”, he is the object of the verb, hence he changes to him which is an accusative case. And when I say “his toys” he changes to his which is a genitive case.
In Arabic we have the same three cases:
Nominative = مرفوع
Accusative = منصوب
Genitive = مجرور
He is Umar = هو عمر
His toys = ألعابه
I saw him = رأيته
He… Him… His…
هو… ه… ه…
“Declension occurs in many languages of the world. Declension is an important aspect of language families like Quechuan (native to the Andes), Indo-European (e.g, German, Lithuanian, Latvian, Slavic, Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient and Modern Greek), Bantu (e.g., Zulu, Kikuyu), Semitic (e.g., Modern Standard Arabic), Finno-Ugric (e.g., Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian), and Turkic (e.g., Turkish).
Old English was an inflectional language, but largely abandoned inflectional changes as it evolved into Modern English.” ~ Wikipedia
Let’s play a game….
Let’s pretend that English still uses more complex declensions (Iraab). We can add suffixes -no (for nominative or مرفوع), -ac (for accusative or منصوب), and -ge (for genitive or مجرور)
How can we write the sentence “The dog chased the cat” using our new English with I’raab?
We can rewrite the sentence “The dog chased the cat” as “The dogno chased the catac”. But we can also write it as “The catac chased the dogno” or “Chased the catac the dogno” since the order of the words won’t matter.
Hence in Arabic we can rewrite “قَتَلَ داوُدُ جَالُوتَ” as “قَتَلَ جَالُوتَ داوُدُ ” without changing the meaning, although there will be a change in levels of expressiveness. But that is a story for another time!