Thursday 13 August 2015

Arabic adjectives - Comparatives and superlatives

بِسمِ اللهِ الرَّحمانِ الرَّحِيم

الحمد لله والصلاة والسلام على نبينا محمد وآله وصحبه

الدرس التاسع عشر



السلام عليكم ورَحْمَةُ اللَّهِ وبَركاتُه,  Alhamdulillah we have been practicing on adjectives.  The last area we want to study in adjectives is superlatives and comparatives.  ex. In english for adjective “Tall / old” we can convert it to comparative by  - “taller / older” . and superlative by - “tallest / oldest”.  

In arabic comparatives and superlatives are formed using following pattern.  
Note: contents are directly from the book “mastering arabic 2nd edition”.

Best example would be below which is superlative form of  (كبير).

I guess below hadith should be known to everyone. Can you notice the comparative adjective ?

صلاة الجماعة أفضل من صلاة الفرد بـ 27 درجة




Practice drills:  read the following.

1)
طويل ، أطول
Tall - Taller / tallest
هذا الولد طويل
this boy is tall
و لكن هذه البنت هي أطول من الولد
but this girl is taller than the boy
هي الأطول في المدرسة
she is the tallest in the school

2)

 (Older - أقدم)
(old - قديم)
هذا البيت القديم
this house is old
ولكن هذا القصر أقدم من البيتِ   
but this fort is older than the house
هو أقدم قصر في البلاد
this is the oldest fort in the country



3) Try to translate below


There are some important points to be noted for comparative and superlatives.

Note 1:   The comparative does not change according to whether they are describing something masculine / feminine. or dual / plural.

ex:

الطالباتُ المدرسةِ أذكي من الطلابِ المدرسةِ
The girl students of the school are more intelligent than the boy students of the school

Note 2: If the second and third letters of the adjective are the same , they are written together with shadda in comparative. and if the third root letter is (waw - و) or (ya - ي) this changes to (alif)
example:

strong
شديد

stronger
أشدَدُ
stronger
أشدَّ
little
قليل

lesser
أقلّ
sweet
حلو

sweeter
أحلى

Note 3:   خير and  شرّ  are used as meaning better and worse.   For these two there is NO comparative form.  ex.  (أخير) is wrong.


زيد خيرمن بكر
zaid is better than bakr
زينب خير من هند
zaynab is better than hind
زينب شرّ امرأة
zaynab is worst woman

And always remember …..

الصلاة خير من النوم

2 comments:

  1. Can you please give us more examples from the Quraan and the sunnah, jazaakumullaahu khayran

    ReplyDelete
  2. Word دم (blood) can be written in comparative form as أدم ?

    ReplyDelete