Arabic has two genders and no neuter. The feminine ending ة (tāʾ marbūṭa) and how to say it, feminine nouns without ة (countries, paired body parts, sun, earth, war), masculine words in ة, and gender agreement.
I can tell masculine from feminine nouns, including the common feminines without ة, form the feminine of people's nouns and adjectives with ة, and make adjectives and pronouns agree.
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
طالِب / طالِبَة
student (m/f)
بِنْت جَميلَة
a beautiful girl
الشَّمْسُ جَميلَة
The sun is beautiful
وَلَد طَويل
a tall boy
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
Arabic has two genders, masculine and feminine, and no neuter. Every noun has one of them, things included, and adjectives, pronouns, demonstratives and verbs all follow it. The main feminine marker is ة (tāʾ marbūṭa): add it to a masculine word for a person or to an adjective, and you get the feminine.
| Masculine | Feminine |
|---|---|
| طالِبٌ - student (man) | طالِبَةٌ - student (woman) |
| مُدَرِّسٌ - teacher (man) | مُدَرِّسَةٌ - teacher (woman) |
| مِصْرِيٌّ - Egyptian (man) | مِصْرِيَّةٌ - Egyptian (woman) |
| كَبيرٌ - big | كَبيرَةٌ - big |
Nouns for things that end in ة are feminine too: مَدينَةٌ (city), سَيّارَةٌ (car), مَدْرَسَةٌ (school).
ة is a t written in the shape of ه. At a pause it is just -a: مَدينَة (madīna). Before another word it is heard as t: مَدينَةُ دِمَشْقَ (madīnatu dimashq). With a possessive ending it becomes an ordinary ت: سَيّارَةٌ, سَيّارَتي (my car).
A few words in ة are masculine because they name men: خَليفَةٌ (caliph), and men's names such as حَمْزَةُ and أُسامَةُ. They take masculine adjectives: حَمْزَةُ طالِبٌ مُجْتَهِدٌ.
The adjective takes the gender of its noun, whether it stands next to it or after it as the predicate: وَلَدٌ طَويلٌ (a tall boy), بِنْتٌ طَويلَةٌ (a tall girl), الشَّمْسُ حارَّةٌ (the sun is hot). The pronoun follows too: a book is هُوَ, a city is هِيَ. Colour adjectives have their own feminine: أَحْمَرُ / حَمْراءُ (red). And plurals of things take feminine singular agreement, a rule you will meet with plurals.
English speakers have no gender to transfer, so learn every noun with its gender, the way you learn its plural: كِتابٌ (m), شَمْسٌ (f).
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesAdjective does not agree in gender with its noun
Feminine noun → add ة to adjective. Masculine → no ة.
Treated an exception word as the wrong gender
Some words like شمس, أرض are feminine without ة - memorize these
طالِب / طالِبَة
student (m/f)
Adding ة to طالب creates the feminine form طالبة.
بِنْت جَميلَة
a beautiful girl
بنت is naturally feminine - the adjective جميل adds ة to agree: جميلة.
الشَّمْسُ جَميلَة
The sun is beautiful
شمس has no ة but is feminine - adjective must still be feminine: جميلة.
وَلَد طَويل
a tall boy
ولد is masculine - adjective طويل stays masculine (no ة).
مِصْرُ جَميلَةٌ في الشِّتاءِ.
Egypt is beautiful in winter.
miṣru jamīlatun fi sh-shitāʾ - no ة on مِصْر, yet it is feminine, like most country names and the names of cities, so the adjective is جَميلَة. A few countries are masculine: العِراقُ، المَغْرِبُ، لُبْنانُ.
الكِتابُ جَديدٌ، وَالمَكْتَبَةُ قَديمَةٌ.
The book is new, and the bookshop is old.
al-kitābu jadīdun wal-maktabatu qadīma - one root, two genders: كِتاب is masculine, مَكْتَبَة (with ة) feminine, and each adjective follows its own noun.
الشَّمْسُ حارَّةٌ وَالرّيحُ قَوِيَّةٌ.
The sun is hot and the wind is strong.
ash-shamsu ḥārratun war-rīḥu qawiyya - two feminines without ة, sun and wind, each with a feminine adjective. They are on the list you learn by heart.
حَمْزَةُ طالِبٌ مُجْتَهِدٌ.
Hamza is a hard-working student.
ḥamzatu ṭālibun mujtahid - حَمْزَة ends in ة but is a man's name, so everything after it is masculine: طالِب, مُجْتَهِد.
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Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
§ 289 (p. 177): Arabic nouns are masculine only, feminine only, or of common gender. Rem. a: "None of the Semitic languages have what we call the neuter gender." Rem. b: feminines are either real (a woman, a she-camel) or unreal, among them الشَّمْسُ, the sun.
§ 290 (pp. 177-179): a noun is feminine by meaning or by form. By meaning: nouns that denote females (أُمٌّ, a mother), names of countries and towns (مِصْرُ, Egypt), though "those names, however, which belong to the triptote declension, are originally masculine", as الشام and العراق, and are feminine when "inflected as diptotes", the names of winds and of fire, and "many parts of the body, especially those that are double" (hand, leg, eye, ear). By form: nouns ending in ة, and in ـى or ـاء when not part of the root. A few nouns in ة are masculine "because they apply to males", as خَليفَةٌ, caliph.
§ 291 (pp. 179-180): a list of nouns "which are feminine, not by form or signification, but merely by usage", among them أَرْضٌ (the earth), حَرْبٌ (war), دارٌ (a house), ريحٌ (wind) and الشَّمْسُ (the sun).
Chapter 7, "Noun inflections: gender, humanness, number, definiteness, and case" (pp. 119-204) is the modern reference treatment of gender and agreement in Modern Standard Arabic. Cited from the publisher's catalogue record; the chapter text was not consulted.