Verbs: an overview

Two tenses, three moods, an imperative, and a lot of information packed into a single word.

An Arabic verb is denser than an English verb. A single conjugated form tells you what was done, who did it, when, and (for second and third person) what gender they are. There are no auxiliary verbs in the English sense — no "do," no "have done," no "will be doing." Instead, Arabic uses two basic tense-aspect forms (past and present), an imperative, two extra moods derived from the present, and a few particles that combine with these forms to express the rest. The system is more compact than English's but expects more from each word.

The two main forms

The two backbones of the verb system are the past (or perfective) and the present (or imperfective).

The past tense is built by adding suffixes to a stem. Each suffix encodes person, gender, and number.

The present tense is built differently — with a prefix on a slightly different stem, sometimes plus a suffix.

Notice how prefixes do most of the work in the present (a-, ta-, ya-, na-) and how the verb encodes the subject so completely that an explicit pronoun is rarely needed.

The imperative

The imperative is built from the present tense by stripping the prefix and prefixing an alif:

Moods of the present: indicative, subjunctive, jussive

The present tense in fully vocalized MSA actually has three moods, distinguished by their final vowel:

• Indicative — the default, ending in -u (or -na/-ni for the dual/plural-with-suffix forms): yaktubu, "he writes."
• Subjunctive — used after certain particles like an ("that"), li ("in order to"), lan ("will not"). Ends in -a: yaktuba.
• Jussive — used after lam ("did not"), laa in commands, conditional clauses. Ends with no vowel (or a sukuun): yaktub.

The three moods look the same when case endings are dropped, which they often are. So in practice, mood matters in formal vocalized text and in fixed expressions but rarely surfaces in casual writing.

Future and other tenses

There is no separate future tense form. To express the future, you prefix sa- or use the particle sawfa with the present:

For finer-grained tense and aspect — past continuous, present perfect, pluperfect — Arabic strings together kaana ("was") with another verb. See tense and aspect.

Why this feels different to English speakers

Three things stand out. First, the verb carries the subject. You very rarely need to write he or she — the prefix or suffix already says so. Second, person and gender are baked into nearly every form, including the past. There is no neutral "wrote" — there are eight or so different forms of the past depending on who did the writing. Third, the verb is built by combining a fixed three-letter root with a pattern of vowels and affixes. The pattern is shared with thousands of other verbs. See roots and patterns and the ten verb forms for how that machinery extends.

Twelve verb forms in context

What it's called in the Arabic tradition

Verb is فِعْل (fiʿl). The past tense is الماضي (al-maaDii, "the gone"); the present is المُضارِع (al-muDaariʿ, "the resembling," because it resembles a noun in form). The imperative is الأَمْر (al-amr). Indicative, subjunctive, and jussive are المَرْفوع، المَنْصوب، المَجْزوم (al-marfuuʿ, al-manSuub, al-majzuum).