LESSON 3

UNIT 1 (1.1)
PROPERTIES OF THE ISM-STATUS
(DOER AND DETAIL)

How to identify the doer and detail in a sentence




   

Lets start with a quick review. How many kinds of words are there in Arabic? Ans: 3

- What are they? ISM, FIL, HARF ( - -

). As you remember -

is a Person, Place, Thing, Idea, Adjective, Adverb and more.

is a word that is either in the Past tense, Present tense or Future tense.

is a word that doesnt make any sense unless there is a word after it.

The hardest of these (3) is the and that is what we are going to start with. We

are going to conquer the first, and spend some time trying to figure out what the

is all about. So that when we read the Quran and we come across an we

can tell a few good things about it, figure it out, and then InshaAllah build more &
more knowledge on top of that.

So today is our introduction to the Ism / beyond the definition. From here on,
until however long we study, I expect you to know that definition that you learnt last
time: Person, Place, Thing, Idea, Adjective, Adverb and more. Thats supposed to be
in your head already. So we are going beyond that now. The first thing I will give you,
and this will organise your notes, you should print out the 201 handouts.

The / Ism - has 4 properties.

I like to describe the like the tyres on a car. Every car has 4 tyres. So if the
car is going to be balanced, each of the tyres have to be the right size and they have

to be in the right place. And lots of animals have 4 legs. The is like an animal

that stands on 4 Properties. So when you look at an you should be able to tell

here are its 4 Properties. Something cool about the Adam was the first
human being, and Allah told us that He didnt just teach him how to speak

Bayyinah TV - Arabic with Husna UNIT 1 (1.1)

Notes by Musarrat Bano

m_bano@hotmail.com

LESSON 3

l... m
Surah Baqarah 2:31

Allah taught Adam the Ism
NOUNS
Names of things.

So even when Allah taught Adam He began with the / Ism, and we are also

going to begin with the .

4 Properties of the Ism. Remember them, even if you dont understand them:
(1) Status
(2) Number
(3) Gender
(4) Type

And I want them in this order, because this is the order Im going to teach you in.
First we learn Status, then we will move on to Number, then we will move on to
Gender, then finally we will study Type.

- - and

I told you between

whats the hardest part?
Ans:

These 4 Properties are the Properties of the - of these 4 the hardest one is
Status. So what do we always do when we learn? We take on the hardest part first.
Get that over with, so we can enjoy a vacation when we get to the easier parts
thats easy, compared to what we did before. So today we are going to learn, at
least some things about Status. Not too much, but at least some things, we are
going to learn Status for quite some time.

Im going to give you an example, this is in your document, its on page 2.
e.g. (1) I was eating too much chocolate
(2) My teeth began aching
(3) My dentist gave me a root canal

So we have 3 sentences. Imagine this is a story. Who is the main character in the
story? Ans. I. How did you know? Because I am mentioned in first sentence as I,
and first word in second sentence as My and mentioned in third sentence with the
word My and Me.

Imagine if these were all pictures, i.e. imagine all 3 sentences were pictures.
Whose picture would you see next to the word I, My or Me? You would see your
own picture. In other words, the word I, the word My and the word Me are all
talking about yourself.

Because they are all talking about yourself, I could think that maybe, I, My,
Me mean the same thing. So if they mean the same thing, so I could probably take
Me and put it in the position of I and say ME was eating too much chocolate.
Because they mean the same thing. Or I could say: I teeth began aching. I dentist
gave MY a root canal. But this doesnt make sense. Even though I, My and
Me are all talking about the same person, myself, but I cant really move them
wherever I want. They all have their place and you cant really move them. You cant
really say: ME dentist gave I a root canal or I dentist gave me a root canal.
You cant do that.
Bayyinah TV - Arabic with Husna UNIT 1 (1.1)

Notes by Musarrat Bano

m_bano@hotmail.com

LESSON 3

That doesnt make any sense. You dont have to be a student of grammar to know
that, it just doesnt sound right, thats kind of what Status is in English.

The word I has a certain status, it has a certain role in the sentence, so it can
only be used a certain way.

The word My has a different kind of status.

The word Me has a different kind of status.

STATUS
is all about what is the word doing in the sentence.

Now I will give you just 3 labels that you have to try to remember. The first lesson
was Status. Now Im going to give you a little bit of an exercise. Think of every
sentence like a story, and in a story, you are trying to figure out in each sentence
(and each sentence is a part of the story) and in that story you are trying to figure
out, who is the most important character. The most important character is the one
who does something. The one who is the actor, the one who does something. So
when you say I was eating too much chocolate, who is the most important
character? Ans. I am.

e.g. I WAS EATING TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE.

e.g. MY TEETH BEGAN ACHING
- Whats the act thats happening? What action is happening? Ans: aching
- Am I doing the aching or is the teeth doing the aching? Ans: the teeth are
doing the aching. So circle teeth because they are the doer:
e.g. MY TEETH BEGAN ACHING

Whose the doer in the first case? Answer: I

Whose the doer in the second case? Answer: Teeth

Third case: MY DENTIST GAVE ME A ROOT CANAL
Whose the doer? Ans: dentist.
MY DENTIST GAVE ME A ROOT CANAL

Now I will give you some sentences listen carefully and find me the Doer:
e.g. Allah created the skies and the earth.
e.g. The Messenger of Allah taught us.
e.g Husna paid attention in class.
e.g. Bob kicked Joe.
e.g. Joe kicked Bob.

You can tell who the Doer is. The Doer is a kind of Status. So one of the
Status is Doer. Today Im going to teach you: 3 STATUS.

1st Status is the Doer.

Bayyinah TV - Arabic with Husna UNIT 1 (1.1)

Notes by Musarrat Bano

m_bano@hotmail.com

LESSON 3

The 2nd Status is probably the hardest Status. The first kind of Status was the
Doer. Maybe today we will just do 2 Status, and leave the 3rd one for later. Because
we have to study 3 altogether. So heres the 2nd kind of Status: Whenever someone
does something, they are the Doer, but sometimes in a sentence you get extra
information, more information about what the Doer did, for example, if I were to say
to you: I ate lunch yesterday outside the house, very quickly I said a long
sentence.
Who is the DOER? Ans. I am
What did I eat?
Ans. lunch
Where did I eat it? Ans. outside
When did I eat it? Ans. yesterday
How did I eat it?
Ans. quickly

All these Details
There are 2 kinds of questions:1) A question you ask to find out who the Doer is (i.e. question about the Doer)
2) Questions about the DETAILS

Who ate?
is that a question about the Doer or about the Detail? Ans: Thats a
question about Doer.

Like for example if somebody asks you: Who teaches you Arabic? The answer to
that would be a Doer or a Detail? Ans: Doer - Because whoever the answer is,
does the act of teaching.

Now lets talk about Details
What does your dad teach you?
- The answer to that is a Doer or a Detail? Ans: Detail

Where does your dad teach you? = Detail

When does your dad teach you? = Detail

How does your dad teach you? = Detail

How long does your dad teach you? = Detail

All these are Details.

The first, important question is: Who did the ACT?

That is the DOER STATUS. All the other answers are DETAIL Status.
Lets try to find the Details:
I WAS EATING TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE
Question is: What were you eating? Give me some Details. Ans. Too much
chocolate must be a Detail. So underline Details, Doers we circled.
I WAS EATING TOO MUCH CHOCOLATE
MY TEETH BEGAN ACHING
MY DENTIST GAVE ME A ROOT CANAL

Is the dentist a Doer or a Detail? Ans: Doer

What did he give? Ans: Root canal

Who did he give it to? Ans: me

Bayyinah TV - Arabic with Husna UNIT 1 (1.1)

Notes by Musarrat Bano

m_bano@hotmail.com

LESSON 3

How many details do I have? Ans: two who did he give it to? me what did
he give? a root canal.

In other words, when you want to discover Doers and Details you ask yourself
2 questions: Who did it? / Who is doing it / Who is going to do it & the 2nd question
you ask is Can you tell me more about what happened? And all those answers will
be Details.

Im going to give you a long sentence and lets see if you can figure out where the
Doer is, where the Details are:
Husna studied Arabic today for 10mins at home

Where is the Doer? Ans: Husna

Where are the Details? Ans: studied - Wrong! Not studied you know why not?
Thats really important that you made that mistake. You know why studied is not a

Detail? Studied is Past tense, Present tense, or Future tense? So thats a ,

because studied is Past tense - Husna Studied. And if is a it cant be an

And if its not an it cant have Status. Because STATUS is one of the 4

Properties of the - So studied is not a Detail, studied is a

-

HUSNA = Doer

Studied =

Where are some Details? Ans: Arabic She studied Arabic. So its the answer to
what question? Turn it into a question.
- What did Husna study?
- Where did she study?
- How long did she study?
- When did she study?

All of those will be Detail.

Ans: Arabic
Ans: Home
Ans: 10mins
Ans: today

So far we have 2 kinds of STATUS:

1) Doers
2) Details

Before we wrap up, we should do a really quick re-cap of everything we did today.

Isms have how many Properties? Ans: 4

What are they? Ans: STATUS, NUMBER, GENDER, & TYPE

Which of those four have we started to learn? Ans: STATUS.

How many kinds of Status are there supposed to be? Ans. 3

We know how many so far? Ans: 2

What are the two we do know? Ans: DOER STATUS & DETAIL STATUS
InshaAllah in the next session, we are going to learn one more Status, and move on.

I 



Bayyinah TV - Arabic with Husna UNIT 1 (1.1)

Notes by Musarrat Bano

m_bano@hotmail.com