دروس اللغة العربية — الكتاب الأول
Durūs al-Lugha I
Madinah Arabic, Book One
The first book of the Madinah series: the nominal sentence, the definite article, the prepositions and the three cases — taught entirely in Arabic, one structure at a time.
8 lessons
The set text
- دروس اللغة العربية لغير الناطقين بهاDurūs al-Lughat al-ʿArabiyya li-Ghayr al-Nāṭiqīna bihā (the Madinah books)
Three graded books that teach the language from the first sentence to the beginnings of iʿrāb, with no translation and no English crutch.
- العربية بين يديكAl-ʿArabiyya Bayna YadaykRead alongside it
Read alongside the Madinah books for what they do not drill: the spoken register, listening, and a far wider vocabulary.
By the end of it
- Read a vowelled Arabic sentence aloud and understand it without translating it.
- Build a correct nominal sentence and name its two parts.
- Recognise the three cases by their signs on a singular noun.
Take first
No prerequisite — you may start here.
Lessons
اسم الإشارةThis and that — the demonstrative
The book opens with hādhā and dhālika and never leaves Arabic: a pointed finger, a named object, and the student is already reading a sentence with no verb in it.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 1–2.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمُبْتَدَأThe subject of a nominal sentenceالخَبَرThe predicate
أل التعريف والحروف الشمسية والقمريةThe definite article; sun and moon letters
Al- is written the same everywhere and pronounced in two ways. The fourteen sun letters swallow the lām and double themselves; the fourteen moon letters do not. The rule is heard before it is named.
ReadingBook 1, lesson 3.
Recording to followحروف الجرّThe prepositions and the genitive
Fī, ʿalā, min, ilā: the first governor the student meets. What follows a preposition is majrūr, and the kasra on its end is the first case-sign he learns to see.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 4–5.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالإعْرابCase and mood inflection
الضمائرThe pronouns
Huwa, hiya, anta, anti, anā — and the attached pronouns that ride on the end of a noun: kitābī, kitābuka, kitābuhu. The book introduces annexation here without ever using the word iḍāfa.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 6–8.
Recording to followالاستفهامAsking a question
A-, hal, man, mā, ayna, kayfa, li-man. The question is the drill: the class answers in full sentences, so every interrogative is another hundred sentences of the structure just learnt.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 9–11.
Recording to followالتأنيثThe feminine and the tāʾ marbūṭa
Hādhihi against hādhā, ṭālibatun against ṭālibun. Agreement is introduced as a habit long before it is stated as a rule: the adjective follows its noun in gender, number, definiteness and case.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 12–14.
Recording to followالجمعThe plural
The sound masculine plural (muslimūna / muslimīna), the sound feminine plural (muslimātun), and the broken plural, which has no rule but the ear and the dictionary: rajul → rijāl, kitāb → kutub.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 15–18.
Recording to followالجملة الاسميةThe nominal sentence, named at last
Only now are the two parts given their names: the mubtadaʾ that the sentence begins with and the khabar that completes it — both in rafʿ. The whole of Book 1 has been building this sentence; here the student learns to parse it.
ReadingBook 1, lessons 19–23, with revision.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمُبْتَدَأThe subject of a nominal sentenceالخَبَرThe predicateالإعْرابCase and mood inflection
Entries covered by this course
And then
The verb enters: past, present and imperative; kāna and inna with their sisters; the dual and the numbers. The sentence stops being a label and starts being an event.
Open the courseThe first matn of Nahw, read chapter by chapter: speech and its three parts, the four states of iʿrāb, and the three great lists — what is raised, what is opened, what is lowered.
Open the courseThe scale of the word: how a three-letter root is weighed against fāʾ-ʿayn-lām, turned through its six bābs, augmented into ten more, and derived into the doer, the done-to, the place and the instrument.
Open the course