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The verbs call for no further remark beyond the fact that there is a feminine form of the 3rd person sing., present and past tense. Thus, "she writes," hīya tiktib instead of yiktib; "she wrote," hīya katabet instead of katab; similarly, "she was," kānet instead of kan. Collective nouns also take this feminine singular form; as El gemāl tākul, the camels eat.
THE PRONOUN.
Except when governing the verb or as the subject of a sentence, the forms of personal pronouns ana, inta, huwa, &c., are not used, but another form as in 'andi, I have, quoted above; similarly, taḥti, under me, ganbi, by my side.
To express possession the word bit'a, belonging to, is used. Thus,
| bit'ai, mine, | bit'aak, thine, | bit'a-u, his, |
| bit' ana, ours, | bit'akum, yours, | bit'ahum, theirs. |
But, unless it is intended to lay stress on the possessive, this word is generally replaced by the suffix. Thus,
| milki, my property; | wishak, your face; | riglu, his leg, &c. |
The dative form of the personal pronoun is made with the prefix l:—
| lī, to me, | lak, to thee, | lu, to him, |
| lena, to us, | lakum, to you, | lahum, to them. |
FORMATION OF PLURALS.
The regular form of plural is made by the addition of -īn to masculine words and -āt to feminine. The feminine word generally ends in ة (see p. 10) and is transcribed as ah when it is a simple noun and īeh when a derivative noun. It therefore causes little difficulty, and being feminine in accordance with previously conceived ideas on the subject, one is not troubled with unreasonable genders. As a set-off to this, the plurals of nouns disport themselves under so many guises that the above rule of adding -īn and -āt is chiefly of use in the formation of the plurals of adjectives and of feminine derivative nouns. The plurals of nouns[1] ring the following kinds of changes,
- ↑ And of some adjectives.
