Arabic Grammar Kaana and its Sisters

SabaaH al-kheir! Right now we're going to talk about special set of verbs that we call, rather poetically, 'Kaana and its sisters,' or in Arabic كان وأخواتها. All of these are verbs that mark the time or duration of actions, events or states. Some of them you probably recognize, right? كان 'to be,' أصبح, 'to become,' ما زال, 'to still be, or to still keep doing,' something. I've listed them here. There are approximately twelve, depending on the source you consult. Some of them are quite rare, quite archaic, even, and unless you go digging around very, very old books, old poetry, you're Unlikely to encounter them in modern usage. But I've included them all just so no one ever tells you that they don't exist. They function essentially like other verbs, but in Arabic there are couple of major differences. One, we use special set of terms to describe the grammar aound them in the sentence. Two, their direct objects, if they have direct objects, take special case ending. And three, they can be used with مضارع مرفوع, conjugated present tense verb, to convey The timing of state or an action with another helping verb. So let's take look at some examples. First, as you know, in جملة اسمية, regular, nominative, non verbal sentence, we use two words to talk about the subject and the predicate. If said 'the boy is short,' الولد قصير الولد is my subjec,t my beginning, my مبتدأ, and then قصير is the news, the payoff, the predicate or what we call in Arabic الخبر. Now suppose that wanted to say the same thing, only in the past. 'The boy was short.' He grew up and got taller. But what we want to say is the boy was short. So I'm going to use the verb for 'being' in the past. I'm going to say كان. And now, instead of مبتدأ and خبر, use slightly different, more specific set of terminology. Since the whole sentence is now being affected by كان, الولد is now called اسم كان, sort of like 'the noun of kaana,' and then قصير, the end, the predicate, is specifically called خبر كان. So, in terms of What we've done with sentence structure, not really much Has changed, but in Arabic, we need to know to refer to it by second set of forms. The other thing that... Excuse me, second set of terminologies, right? But the form stays pretty much the same. Here, قصير is almost like the object of كان. كان is verb, and so direct objects for all verbs in Arabic need to take special case ending, that منصوب case ending. So since this is an indefinite noun, I'm going to add 'fatha tanwiin.' كان الولد قصيراً. We probably aren't going to hear that ending in speech, but we might see it if we were reading it in book or newspaper article in more formal, less colloquial context. If we wanted to say instead 'the boy is not short, the terminology would remain pretty much the same, and the rules would stay the same but instead of كان we could negate this with ليس: 'the boy is not short.' And then Instead of saying اسم كان and خبر كان we would refer to these specifically as اسم ليس and خبر ليس. But the process and the ideas remain essentially the same. Let's look at another example. If we wanted to say, since we're talking about children and their relative heights, 'the girl got tall, the girl became tall.' Maybe she was short, now she got tall. would take my verb for 'becoming' or 'turning into' something, and say أصبحَتْ البنت طويلة. Because بنت is feminine, we're talking about girl here, and then, because we need that منصوب ending and طويلة Is indefinite, would say طويلةً. But wouldn't have an 'alif,' because have 'taa marbuuTa' to mark the feminine ending for 'the girl.' So in case like this, البنت would be اسم أصبح 'the subject, the noun of أصبح,' our sentence, or excuse me, our verb that is sort of the main action in the sentence, and then طويلة would be خبر أصبح. We probably wouldn't refer to it as 'اسم أصبحَتْ,' because we refer to the verbs in their masculine, past tense form. That's just how it tends to be done. To have said so as well, since these nouns, 'the boy' and 'the girl,' البنت and الولد, are the subjects in formal Arabic, if we were vowelling, if we were doing all of the case endings, the إعراب, الولد would be مرفوع with 'Damma,' as would البنت. We have separate videos on what the case endings are in Arabic, and how we use them in individual sentences so, if you haven't studied this yet, don't worry, it's coming down the road for you soon. But if you're curious or if you need refresher, you can go look at our videos on إعراب, case endings in Arabic and the مرفوع endings, and the منصوب endings. The other thing that كان وأخواتها can do for us is talk about actions happening. Specifically not just states of being, ('the boy is not short,' or 'the girl became tall,') but things that people were doing, or are still doing. We can sort of give little more Information about the timeframe and the state of being while the action was happening. So if want to say 'my friend was studying in her room,' would say كانت صديقتي تدرس في غرفتها. Here have كان, my verb and then صديقتي is going to be اسم كان, but here, don't have noun or an adjective, direct object, have instead whole جملة فعلية, verbal sentence, which is considered خبر كان. So, don't need noun there, and don't have to worry about the إعراب, these case endings, because have verb, and it's going to take its own case ending in formal Arabic that has its own rules. But this would mean 'my friend was studying,' kind of past continuous sense. 'My friend was studying in her room.' One final example: if wanted to say 'my friend is still living in Amman,' Then would take this verb for 'still being,' and would say--let's make it male friend this time-- ما زال صديقي يسكن في عمّان. So here we have ما زال our verb, that's sort of situating things in time, 'the friend is still...' صديقي would be اسم ما زال and then here again, we have جملة فعلية, sentence that begins with verb. So this ما زال is kind of situating this verb more specifically in time. 'My friend is still living in Amman.' And then that جملة فعلية, that verbal sentence would be the خبر of ما زال.