This lesson will help you understand the feminine and plural in Arabic, and enables you to use real examples shown below. If you have any question let us know by clicking on the “Contact us” button, this lesson is very important since it covers a very widely used element in Arabic which is the feminine and plural.

Masculine to Feminine in Arabic:

To form a feminine word from the masculine in Arabic, you simply add “taa’ marbuta” which looks like (ة)   or ( ـة ):

kalbكلب  (dog masculine) è kalba  كلبة(dog feminine)

tefl طفل (child masculine) è tefla طفلة (child feminine)

mohandes مهندس (engineer masculine) è mohandesa   مهندسة(engineer feminine)

However not all animals or humans masculines can take a “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة in their feminine form, for example:

Asad أسد (lion) è Labo’a  لبؤة(lioness)

But

Walad ولد (boy) è Bent بنت  (girl)

In Arabic, words are either masculine or feminine, so anything you may think of should take either feminine or masculine form, now you can recognize if a word is feminine or masculine by its ending, for example:

Qessa قصة (story (is feminine because as you may have noticed it has “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة at the end of the word, similar are:

Shajara شجرة (tree), Saheefa صحيفة (newspaper), Kora كرة (ball), Ghorfa غرفة (room), Bohaira بحيرة (lake) … and therefore the adjective following these feminine words should also take the feminine form (usually add a “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة to them)

Most Arabic nouns are considered masculine if no “taa’ marbuta” is connected to them, however like any other language there are exceptions:

The good news is that they are not many, and the general rule is “add a “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة to form the feminine from a masculine word.

Singular to Plural in Arabic:

In Arabic to form the plural we use two methods: add a suffix or change the body of the word (in irregular cases).

A suffix (aatات  ) is added to form a plural usually when a word ends with a “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, but before adding the suffix we first have to omit the existing ((ة, ــة :

For example:

Shajara شجرة (a tree) è Shajaraat شجرات (trees). So the body here is shajar شجر to form the feminine we add to it “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, to form the plural we add the suffix “aat ات ” as you can see in the example above.

We can also add the suffix (aatات  ) even to words not ending with “taa’ marbuta” ((ة, ــة, for example:

Qitar قطار (train) è Qitaraat قطارات  (trains)

Mashroob مشروب (drink) è Mashroobaat  مشروبات(drinks)

Another suffix (een ين ) is added to form the plural of some words (especially nationalities, religions, professions…)

Amreki أمريكي (American) è amrekieen  أمريكيين(Americans)

Moslem مسلم (Moslem) è Moslemeen مسلمين  (Moslems)

Motarjem مترجم (translator) è Motarjemeen مترجمين (translators)

There are other ways to form the plural, but they’re a little complicated and we cannot go through them at this point.

I hope you benefited from this lesson (the Arabic feminine and plural), please check our other lessons to take advantage of the other useful information they may contain.