Training Video 1

Welcome everyone to the first of the two training videos! In this presentation I dont want to recap verbatim everything that was mentioned in the report. Initially my aim and purpose was to provide the content through the report and then teach the same material in the videos in order to cater to different learning styles. That was the original purpose. But then I saw the 3000+ downloads, over 500 comments and 900 title suggestions - at the time of creating this video. I remember seeing a comment where the brother said he read the report three times. That made me change my mind. I didnt think it was fair to repeat what was in the report without making any significant changes. So I scrapped that earlier presentation and now I am recreating it for you.

4 Stages of Growth
I am going to speak about the four stages of growth that you need to go through in order to succeed. They are: Start-up phase Initial growth phrase Rapid growth phase Continuous growth phrase

As we move forward we are going to talk about the behaviour that is required in every stage, what you can expect and how long each stage should last. I will quickly talk about the continuous growth phase first because I wont be talking about that throughout the presentation. It is the stage that never ends. This is what we mean when we say Arabic is the first thing the scholars study and they continue studying it for the rest of their lives. Imam Nawawi who is one of the greatest scholars of this ummah used to split up his day into 12 portions. He was studying Saheeh Muslim, al muhazzab (book in Shafiee fiqh), tafseer, usool and it comes in his biography,

. One of the

sciences he was studying was the science of Arabic morphology, what we introduced to you in the report. He doesnt consider himself relieved from this because the depths of Arabic are just so vast, especially balaagha. The standard book in grammar is 132 pages but the standard book in balaagha is 550 pages. Then there are books in tafseer which are very large. The amount that one can study really never stops. We want you to get out of the start-up phase, quickly through the initial growth phase, into the rapid growth, and then gain a level of independence. That is the key word. Once you are in continuous growth you now have a level of independence. You can now access the texts on your own and be reasonably confident that you are not misunderstanding. In the start-up phase we will give you the overall framework of how the language works. In the initial growth we will build on that and fill from 4% to 20%. In the start-up phase we focus only on the 4% (it was talked about in the report). Then in the initial growth we fill the next most broadly applicable
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aspects of the language. Then when we move into rapid growth we are studying unvowelled text. We are building analytical skills to make sure you dont make mistakes when you are in continuous growth. So when you are studying the books of tafseer and Imam Aaloosi , Imam Raazi, Ibn Taymiyya or Imam Gazzali are speaking about something that is complex then you are not misunderstanding them because we want to train you to think at the level of the scholars. I just gave you a brief overview. As we move forward we will speak more about this.

Start-up
The start-up phase is characterised with uncertainty, worry, anxiety and overwhelm. Within the start-up phase, minimising that should be the primary objective. The material needs to be presented in a way that does not overwhelm the beginner. I am not saying it is easy and there is no effort involved. In fact there is considerable effort in the opening days. Many people may have even left us because of the report; however that is fine because this program/format/method is not for everyone. I like to lead with the elaborate and really attract those that are ideally qualified for the method I have. Its good for the slow learner, I am not trying to discourage the slow learner, but at the same time I have confidence in you that inshaAllah you will get it. I mentioned in the report that by design this start-up phase does not assume that the student gets it 100%. You dont need 100%. I say that because as soon as start-up completes we begin the next stage where we begin the actual reading. As the reading book begins every word, phrase and sentence becomes an example of what was taught to you in the start-up phase. If you had a 60/70% understanding of it then as the book begins soon the 60/70% will become 100%. It cant get more obscure, it can only get clearer. This is having confidence. Even experienced instructors are reluctant and hesitant to expose the students to these elaborate topics early on. On the contrary I just go ahead and do it. There is considerable risk involved but the momentum and enthusiasm just needs to be created which is the main goal. Once the reading texts begins the overwhelm can be removed. This is a lot like how small businesses go through these 4 phases. In the start-up phase the main concern of the business owner is whether they will have enough money to operate. They are worried whether they will be in business tomorrow or not. If they are no longer worrying about that then they are out of the start-up phase. Thats what characterises the start-up phase. They are doing everything themselves and it is characterised by this chaotic overwhelm. During this phase the main aim and objective of the business owner will be building the reserves so they dont have to pump their own money into it but the business will be generating enough revenue to allow them to be able to operate with a profit margin. Similarly throughout the start-up phase we give you this big picture, the overall framework and a significant amount of grammar and vocabulary we can draw on as soon as the text begins. This is our reserves that we build on in the first three weeks in order to help us when we begin the reading text. Building motivation and keeping the enthusiasm levels high is very important. Without this nothing else matters. You can be sitting with the most brilliant scholars and the best curriculum and still fail if the enthusiasm levels are not kept high. Key vocabulary is given to you through the mapping and through the introduction of sarf (morphology), nahw (grammar) and the classification of the word, sentence and phrase. This will then be used as soon as the book begins. We can immediately start drawing on the structures that begin occurring.

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In my normal classes I like to spread it over 8 hours. Every topic is labelled. If you look in the report I can remind you of quite a few of them. First of all we introduced the comprehensiveness of the Arabic language at the word level. Then we presented the ( istansaroo) example which then led to the definition of sarf. It needed to be done in that order. If you started with the definition of sarf it would not have been nearly that impactful. By illustrating the comprehensiveness we created fascination and interest. Then we gave you the components that would then be used within the definition. I am going to do that for you now. I am going to illustrate for you how a mini presentation is presented on a certain topic. I will do that on the comprehensiveness of the Arabic language by presenting the (istansaroo) example. I will take that and from it extract the definition of sarf and map the language with the most basic sound that comes out of the human mouth. That would lead to major topics in grammar. We do one for sarf and we do one for grammar and we alternate between the two. Each can be segmented into a mini presentation or labelled with a different title. You need to know the topics so well that if you are called upon e.g. to present the three parts of speech, how would you do that? Defining them and giving examples would be an inferior method. The better way would be to take the English parts of speech, list them and spend some time on them. Once you spend some time on them you can take them and assign them, the way we did in the report. I will go ahead and give an example of that. The key is that within the first three weeks (start-up phase) we cannot deviate. We must remain within the 4% of the language that has the broadest application. Every word, every sentence and every topic that is introduced in these first three weeks tightly belongs to that 4%. The focus needs to be on this 4%.

Topics covered in the Start-up Phase

We need to highlight the problem and the frustration because they might think that the language is difficult, there is too much memorisation, it is beyond their comprehension or it is too random. So we have to take all of those problems and tie them to a core problem that all of these are really symptoms of that core problem. That core problem was introduced to you in the report. It was the simple to the complex approach. Highlight the problem and then offer the solution. Youd be surprised at the amount of people that offer solutions to which they havent created any problem. Stating the problem would be a topic that would need to be presented. Then we speak about the non-word meanings. There are meanings that come from the individual words but there are many more meanings that come from the vowels, patterns, and grammatical structures. This needs to be presented at an abstract level without too many examples. That one ( istansaroo) example would be sufficient to highlight non-word meanings. How what looked like a single word ended up conveying seven meanings. That would lead to talking about verb tables. The ending on

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(istansaroo) example was a . We can have many more endings. If we want to say group of females how would we do that? If we wanted to say one male how would we do that? We would talk about the table layout and spend a little time on that, without filling the slots. That leads to the definition of sarf. The same thing would be done with grammar. The science of grammar would be introduced by starting with the mapping process, not by leading with the definition. I will do it differently than I did it in my report just to show you that you dont have to parrot my words. It is like a good joke. If you know the punch line you can always reconstruct the joke. Once we have introduced the topic of grammar through the mapping it would lead to the three types of words, the two types of sentences and the two major issues which are associated with each type of sentence. The nominal sentence has its problem and the verbal sentence has its problem. Then the solutions to the problems are presented. This is what we do throughout the first three weeks. This leads us to grammatical states because that is the solution to the sequence problem. Then 15 of the 22 places are developed. That concludes our introductory theory. Then we would move on to the reading text.

Istansaroo example
Here we go with the ( istansaroo) example. I have decided to redo this in the video although it was covered in the report. I feel this is important because every time I have done it people who have heard it before never cease to re-comment saying this is what brought me to the course or Ive taught my students this, or not only does it highlight sarf but it also gives us an appreciation of why Allah chose Arabic as the medium for His final message. The purpose here is not to teach the topics or give you the total possible ways that meanings can be conveyed at the word level. It is only to highlight that what we have on the screen looks like one single word but conveys up to seven meanings. How is that happening? This structure translates as they sought help. When you convey it in English you would need three words. In Arabic the total number of meanings that are coming from the structure are actually more than three. 1) Initial help: coming from the

in the middle ( ). When meanings are

created in Arabic it is done by taking consonants and grouping them in groups of three. Every group of three has an associated meaning. These three letters have the associated meaning of to help. The proof of that is that if you were to change these three letters and substitute them with any three other letters then everything else would stay the same. The seeking part would stay, the they part would stay and the help would change to food. The letters for food are . If I say ( istatamoo), notice how it rhymes, the translation changes from they sought help to they sought food. Clearly the help is coming from the particularness of the three consonants used in the middle.

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2) Notion of seeking: coming from the and at the front ( ) . If you were to remove the and and say only

the translation changes to they helped.

3) Past tense: the structure translates as they sought help. It could have been they seek help, they are seeking help they will seek help or seek help! It is none of those. So where are we getting this past tense from? That would be known by contrasting with the other two. The imperfect verb in the Arabic language that indicates on the present and future needs to have a particular prefix. In the absence of that prefix the word cant be an imperfect verb. What are they?

: , , and . Since what we

have does not begin with any of the 4 letters, it cant be a present or future tense verb. The command verb would have kasra on the . It would be . Since what we have has a fatha on the

it cant be a command either. Necessarily it must be a past tense verb. If

you have a house with three rooms and a person walks in the house, we go look in the first room he is not there, the second room he is not there then that means he must be in the third room. Just by finding him absent in the first two he must be in the third room. By process of elimination we come to the conclusion that the verb on the screen is a past tense verb. Where is that coming from? It is coming from the absence of the prefix at the front and the fatha on the . 4) Active voice: The translation is they sought help. It could have been help was sought from them. The sarf people would tell you that in order for the word to be passive, the letters would be the same but the vowels would be different. The part would change and become . Similarly the would become

and we get

. Teaching that is not the point. The point is that it will be different. The kasra under
the , the fatha on the and the fatha on the all contribute and give us the active voice. 5) Masculine gender of the subject 6) Third person aspect of the subject 7) Plurality of the subject 5, 6, 7 are coming from the . This is mind blowing and highlights comprehensiveness. What looks like a single structure ends up conveying to us up to seven meanings. English tried to do this and they needed at least three words: they sought help. Even that wasnt precise because they in English doesnt distinguish between males and females. This is what the Prophet (peace be upon him) meant when he said

( I was given words of great comprehensive meaning)

( and speech was made concise for me). He was talking about his own talent
and aptitude because he was more eloquent than most. But he was also talking about the language
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because the language has these things built into it. When you know this you end up learning more in a single day than what others learn in a single year of study. That is the mini-presentation on highlighting the comprehensiveness of the Arabic language at the word level. I just did it for you.

Grammar: Mapping
Now if you were to move on to grammar you would do something similar. You would start with the most basic sound that comes out of the human mouth called utterance. In Arabic it is called . The Arabic terms at this stage arent that important. Utterance can either be: meaningful or meaningless. The meaningful can be: one word or more than one word. If it is more than one word it will either contain predication or it wont. i.e. it will either be conveying a complete meaning upon which silence is appropriate or it might be less than that. After doing all of that we end up with three things: word, sentence and phrase. This is all of grammar because when people speak they speak in sentences which are made up of words and phrases. We are going to develop the word, speak a little about the phrase then develop the sentence in the next video.

The word
How do you go about defining the word and classifying it? There are three types but the best way to introduce the three parts of speech would not be to list them. Since the assumption is that you have read the report. I would immediately launch into the English parts of speech and spend about five minutes on those because it is much more productive to spend five minutes on explaining the English parts of speech because the audience already knows what a noun, pronoun, adjective and an adverb is. Even if they dont know then spending five minutes on it is time well spent. All of that will then lead us in understanding the three parts of speech in Arabic. The three parts of speech are:

, and

I can go ahead and give a precise definition for the three parts of speech. That would be accurate but it wont leave a mental imprint. You will not be likely to retain it for a very long time. If I use the other approach, by beginning with the three parts of speech and then assigning them then this is like a supersized grapefruit. Thats an analogy you might have caught. If you didnt that there is book called Made to Stick written by two brothers Chip and Dan Heath. They speak about how to introduce topics in a way that creates stickiness and mental imprint. It is good for teachers or anyone that is in the task of convincing and persuading and communicating with others. Anyway there is a fruit out there called a pomelo. If I wanted to give a definition for it I would have to say that it is of this size, yellowish and has a pink juicy inner core and a rough rind and list all of its attributes but then it would be difficult to really make you understand what it is. If I say it is a supersized grapefruit then you get it straight away.

Parts of Speech
In English we have the 8 or 9 parts of speech: 1) Noun: a word that is used to refer to a place, person or thing.
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2) 3) 4) 5) 6)

Pronoun: smaller words used in place of the noun when it has already been mentioned. Adjective: word that modifies noun, e.g. tall, small, smart, lazy, hardworking. Adverb: modifies other than a noun, e.g. quickly and swiftly Verb: indicates on action plus tense e.g. went, going, will go Prepositions: smaller parts of speech which are used to bring out attributes of the upcoming noun which would otherwise not be indicated upon. E.g. from indicates on origin. Origin is the attribute of a place. If you want to indicate that you are going to have to add the word from before it, so it brings out this attribute that previously could not be understood. 7) Conjunction: e.g. and, or, nor, but. 8) Article: e.g. the. The top four are all grouped together and labelled with the single label called the . The second part of speech is the verb. It is exactly what in Arabic we call the . The third part of speech is

and that includes everything else.

Now when you proceed to define the , and you made your job a lot easier. If you get this one single point it will unravel the entire topic. That would be to understand what it means for a word to indicate a meaning in something else. That is by grabbing onto the and speaking about the first. What is it? You would have to look at the prepositions, conjunctions and articles and find some commonality between them. If you look at the word and, from, to, not, yes they are all examples of . You will see that they all indicate on meanings in something else. When I say and it is indicating on gathering. But in Zaid and Amr came is it the and being gathered or is it Zaid and Amr being gathered in the action of coming? It is Zaid and Amr being gathered in the action of coming. Gathering is a meaning from the meanings and it is a meaning in something else. Every is like that, it indicates upon a meaning in something else. That means and indicate on meanings within themselves. When I say tree it is the tree which is the tree and I am not talking about some other word. Similarly when I say went the notion of going is contained within that very word and not found in some surrounding word. You can then proceed to define the , then follow up and explain the difference between the That would be the lack of tense in the

and the .

and the presence of tense in the .

For the sake of brevity I am going to skip the sub-classifying of the and . When we subclassify our main objectives are: 1. To explain the differences between what we have just grouped together because nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs are in and of themselves quite different. When you take the word quickly and compare it to man there is hardly any commonality there. When
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you take the word them and compare it to very the only commonality is that they are both words that indicate on a meaning in themselves and they are not linked to time. But does that justify generalising them and grouping them with a single label? That would be problematic if we left it there but since we sub-classify that is no longer problematic because what you see together you later see them different. All the commonality is expressed when we say . Their differences are made apparent through the subclassifying process. 2. It also gives us the reserves that we need when we approach the reading text. It gives us this key vocabulary that will be utilised when we draw attention to the words, phrases and sentences that occur in the reading text. 3. The most important benefit is that it allows us to bypass many of the preliminaries that would normally be required in order to present a major topic. I can go ahead and talk about the heart of the Arabic language. I can speak about the lack of is issue and the sequence not determining grammar issue, without too much fear because this sub-classifying has allowed me to do that. It gives me an excuse to do away with many of the preliminaries and get through the core quickly in order to begin the reading text in the third week of class.

Classification of the
The divides into the governing agent and the non-governing agent. Here is the million dollar question. What does it mean to govern and not govern? This is where we present the two analogies. It was done a little different in the report. We came to this question at the end of the report. In my teaching I would normally address it now and I would peel off one layer. Remember the onion analogy. This core theory is given in stages and it is like the peeling of an onion. Every layer reveals more of the system. What does it mean to govern and not govern? At this stage I would speak about the human emotions analogy and follow up with the pronouns analogy.

Grammatical States
Human beings experience emotional states. People make us happy, angry, sad etc. This happens because of interaction with other humans. People treat us in certain ways. Sometimes they fulfil our expectations and other times they dont. These emotions are then reflected on our faces. By looking at the persons face we can tell what emotion they are experiencing. Arabic words behave in a similar fashion. Words influence words and interact with one another and experience grammatical states. Human beings experience emotional states and Arabic words experience grammatical states. Unlike human emotions which are endless grammatical states in Arabic are just four, from amongst them we are interested in three. The fourth one is not part of the introductory theory. They are:

( he) ( him) ( his)

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Notice the he, him and his. Why do they have three variations? Because the pronoun could be the subject, the object or possessive. Whenever the pronoun is intended to be the subject of the verb they say he came, when it is intended to be the object of the verb they say I saw him, and when it is in a possessive structure they say his pen. You are seeing the same meaning essentially being conveyed in three ways in order to highlight grammatical state. This in English only happens in pronouns. In Arabic it happens in the majority of . I am saying the would look different based on how it is used. We can show you this with the house example. The house fell down: I entered the house:

The door of the house:

The point of the examples is the word . In the first example ends with a damma, in the second example it ends with a fatha and in the possessive example it ends with a kasra. In English it stays the same. House in all three. In Arabic, it changes. Just like a human being experiences emotional states and the states are reflected on the face, in the same way Arabic words experience grammatical states. The grammatical states are reflected on the last letter. All of that is for a particular purpose which we will give you in the next video when we talk about the sequence not determining grammar issue. Back to our main question. What does it mean to govern and not govern? Notice we were subclassifying the . All of that was just an excuse to speak about grammatical states and peel the first layer. So lets tie it back in. If you look at all the , then there are certain that influence the way a word looks and other dont do that. If you put a at the beginning of a maadi verb you would get

. on its own means he helped. contributed to the

meaning and created negation. Negation is a meaning in something else. The is negating the verb. In

the ( in) is indicating containment. The word has a kasra that is induced by the

whereas the fatha on is not induced by the . It was there before the came as well. Basically the ending of can move around based on how the word is used in the sentence. The ending of

does not move around. At any rate did not induce any change so it would be a non-governing
agent. Whereas would be a governing agent. We teach all of this theory in the opening 3 weeks and encourage the students to develop their own mini presentations which do not need to be identical to the way I do it.
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Initial Growth
That was all start-up. Once we are out of start-up we begin the reading text which continues for six months. From the middle of the third week till the end of month six. In there all of the theory comes to life. New grammar is taught alongside that. Now we are not only zooming in on the 4% we are broadening out to 20%. Now we take all of the theory that was built in the earlier start-up phaseand apply it to the structures that occur in the reading text. This is where our vocabulary builds rapidly also. We learn all of sarf and 20% of grammar. It fills the gaps in the understanding because throughout the start-up phase the aim was to get through the core with 60-70% retention and comprehension. You dont even have to understand it 100%. This is another big limitation and huge liability for many people. They cant move forward unless they have a 100% understanding of what they are being taught. Here there has to be patience, perseverance and a satisfaction with 60-70%. Because you have to trust that as the book begins the gap will fill. It cant get more obscure. The only reason I speak about a certain topic is because it has broad application. By definition what that means is every subsequent encounter of the principles application can only lead to greater clarity. Immediately in the first passage we would draw attention to any and every thing that was taught in the first three weeks. New material would be introduced based on my judgement. As a teacher I would assess whether this is worth speaking about or not. The author sort of collaborates with us in this, while explaining the story of Ibraheem (peace be upon him) he will repeat sentences and structures, then he will start gradually introducing new structures. As he brings them in the book I bring them. You will be surprised at the amount of people that spend an inordinate amount of time learning things they dont even need. You need to know what the next most important thing you need to learn is. So in the introductory theory we are only teaching you the bare minimum that is required in order to begin any reading. As the book begins the new grammar is introduced while the author introduces the structures in the book. He brings them at the appropriate time when I would want to teach them. It is pretty startling. Very rarely do I have to defer a topic and say, this will be taught later, this will be taught later. We only speak about new structures if it has broad application otherwise they will be ignored. Now we move from 5 to 20%. We spend the six months (initial growth period) filling that gap. Sarf is being taught simultaneously. The rules of sarf are self-contained. You can go ahead and master that first. There is a sort of imbalance because there is more sarf and less grammar. But the grammar that there is, is the most important grammar. From the period from week four until the end of the sixth month it is the 20% we are focusing on.

Rapid Growth
Then we can start playing in the white area in month seven and beyond. That is rapid growth. We do the 132 page best book in the world for grammar book. It is called Hidaaytaun Nahw. I have taught it 19 times. I continue to teach it three times every year and I never delegate any aspect of its teaching. I am going to tell you more about that book in the next video. Then there is tafseer of the Quraan that is introduced in the second year, but we allow our Hidaaytaun Nahw students to attend the tafseer sessions also. We introduce and expose the student to the principles of balaagha. Exactly as we did with grammar in the Qasas book (reading text), in the tafseer sessions through the verses of the Quran we are showing application of rhetorical
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devices. Grammar teaches you flexibility and rhetoric teaches you what to do with that flexibility. A person emailed me about the report; I think they misunderstood how if you have a verb and two nouns then the meaning can be conveyed in six different ways. He thought I was suggesting all six ways of formatting the sentence were equal. Clearly, thats not what I meant. There will be one that is standard and five that are unconventional. Everything else being equal it is the standard one that you would use, the verb at the front, subject second object third. If your listener already knows about the action having occurred and who did it, the only new information that you are giving is that of the object then only then would you employ the structure with the object at the front. If you have a verb and two nouns there are six different ways the sentence can be formatted. Add another major potion and the number jumps and becomes 24. Add one more major portion the number jumps and becomes 120. It keeps multiplying. There is really no limit to the size and length of a verbal sentence. We will talk about that in the next video. That is only one factor. Other than that there is the question of whether to bring it definite or indefinite. If you bring it definite then do you bring it in the form of a pronoun, a demonstrative pronoun or do you say who rejected Shuaib - the subject of the sentence)

( those

( were the losers - the

predicate of the sentence). Allah could have said the nation of Shuaib were losers. Why have so many words been used? Why that particular choice? Grammar only says that the subject of the nominal sentence needs to be definite but it doesnt specify what kind of definite. There are seven kinds of definite. happens to be a relative pronoun, it means who, what, which. By bringing the subject in the form of a relative pronoun, the verse tells you the cause and reason for the loss (i.e. the reason for the predicate). Why did they suffer the loss? Because of their rejection of Shuaib. By saying

you would not be able to capture that. While doing tafseer we highlight

a lot of the principles of balaagha applied, without the theory. Let me tell you the best news, when you open the books of tafseer they assume you know grammar. They wont get into the basics of the parts of speech. If you open up Imaam Aloosi or Imaam Raazi, Abu Al-Saud or one of these linguistic tafseer books they will not be talking about grammar, but when they are highlighting the principle of balaagha within a verse they will summarise for you the topic and then show its application. That means that what you need is the 132 page book in grammar cover to cover and you dont need to read the 550 page monstrosity book in balaagha. Although if you do you will be an expert, and amongst the 1% of mankind because most people dont get to that level. That is the continuous growth phase.

Next Video
Remember these phases and inshaAllah we have a lot more to share with you in the next video. We are going to talk about the lack of is issue, the sequence not determining grammar issue and we are going to develop 15 of the 22 places. I hope you got some good value from this and I would really like to know what you thought about it.

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