Arabic Grammar: Singular Human/Non-Human Nouns & Gender

There are two important ground rules to remember about nouns in the Arabic language:

1. Nouns and adjectives in Arabic always carry gender. Therefore, it is necessary that you pay attention to the gender of a noun because anything referring back to that noun (adjectives, pronouns, verbs, etc) MUST AGREE in gender.
2. Arabic distinguishes between two kinds of nouns:

• human nouns, which are referred to as عاقل, meaning "rational." English equivalents would be words like teacher, student, doctor, etc.
• non-human nouns, which are referred to as غير عاقل, meaning "non-rational." English equivalents would be words like car, notebook, house, etc.

Note about Feminine Gender:

The symbol, taa marbuuTa ة, which may appear at the end of singular nouns and adjectives, is almost indicative of the feminine gender.

The gender of عاقل nouns is determined by the gender of the person being discussed.

• A male teacher: أستاذ
• A female teacher: استاذة
• A male studentL طالب
• A female student: طالبة

An important exception: A noun which indicates a groups of humans, such as the word family (اسرة) is NON-HUMAN. This is because the word itself represents a collective idea, and not an individual human or humans.

The gender of غير عاقل nouns NEVER CHANGES:

• A notebook: دفتر – this is a masculine (مُذَكَّر ) noun
• A car: سيارة - this is a feminine (مُؤَنَّث ) noun

Therefore, while the gender of the word teacher will vary depending on whether you are talking about a female teacher (ستاذة) or male teacher (استاذ), the gender of non-human nouns will never change.

There are no neutral, non-gender words in Arabic; every noun, adjective and verb carries a gender: masculine (مُذَكَّر) or feminine (مُؤَنَّث).

Therefore this is also true of pronouns. There is no non-gender word "it" in Arabic, but only "he" or "she." Therefore:

• if you are using a pronoun to refer to a masculine singular noun, you would use the masculine pronoun هو.
• if you are using a pronoun to refer to a female singular noun, you would use the feminine pronoun هي.