Lesson 4 — My, your, his — possessive endings
Say whose it is by changing the end of the word, not by adding a separate word for "my" or "his". By the end of this lesson you can name anything in the room as belonging to anyone in it.
How it works
Arabic has no separate word for "my"
English says my book — two words. Arabic says كِتَابِي — one word, with a suffix glued to the end. The suffix ـِي (-ī) at the end of كِتَابٌ (a book) makes كِتَابِي, my book. The tanwīn (-un) drops the moment a possessive suffix is added — a word cannot be both indefinite and someone's at the same time.
The six suffixes this lesson gives you
ـِي -ī my · ـُكَ -uka your (to a man) · ـُكِ -uki your (to a woman) · ـُهُ -uhu his · ـُهَا -uhā her · ـُنَا -unā our. Each replaces the word's final vowel and glues straight on — كِتَابٌ becomes كِتَابُكَ (kitābuka), not kitābun-ka.
الْ and a possessive suffix never appear together
الْبَيْتُ (the house) and بَيْتِي (my house) are both already definite — a possessive makes a noun specific on its own, the same job الْ does. You never see الْبَيْتِي; the suffix already means "the house that is mine."
The suffix bends after ī and after a long vowel
After a long ī sound the -hu/-ha suffixes soften to -hi/-ha in careful recitation-style speech, though standard spoken Arabic keeps -uhu/-uha in most positions you will meet at this stage. Lesson 1's rule still holds: in ordinary speech the final short vowel of the base word is often dropped, so بَيْتُكَ is heard as baytuk almost as often as it is said in full.
Words
Sentences
Saying it to someone
Grammar you cannot use in a conversation is not yet Arabic. These are the lines that turn the words above into an exchange.
Practise
- Point to five people you know and name them with a possessive: أَخِي، صَدِيقِي، أُمِّي.
- Ask a partner مَا اسْمُكَ؟ / مَا اسْمُكِ؟ and answer with اِسْمِي.
- Practise the same noun with three different suffixes aloud: بَيْتِي، بَيْتُكَ، بَيْتُهُ.
Transliteration uses ḥ ṣ ḍ ṭ ẓ for the emphatic letters, ʿ for ʿayn, ʾ for hamzah, and ā ī ū for long vowels. Read the Arabic, not the transliteration — the transliteration is a crutch to be dropped as early as you can.