Hello and welcome back to the second part of our three-part series on case endings. 

So, what exactly are case endings when we talk about Arabic grammar? Well, in case you missed the first part, let’s recap it for a minute.

In Arabic, case endings are short vowel marks (or الحَرَكات /alHarakaat/ in Arabic) that are placed above and below the last letter of a word. These let the reader know what the grammatical function of the word is. In other words, they help the reader determine if the word is a subject, object, or verb of a sentence.

Each case marker corresponds to one of the different grammatical cases. These cases are:

المَرْفوع

/almarfooʻ/

nominative

المَنْصوب

/almanSoob/

accusative

المَجْرور

/almajroor/

genitive

In the second part today, we’ll be discussing the accusative case.

The Accusative Case

In Arabic, this case is marked by a فَتحَة /fatHah/ or a dash above the word / َ / making a short “a” sound. 

Note that the object of a verbal sentence is always in the accusative case, as in:

شاهَدَ عَلِيٌّ التِّلْفازَ

/shaahada ‘aliyyun ittilfaaza/

Ali watches television.

Here, the object is التِّلْفازَ/ittilfaaza/; thus, it takes a /fatHah/ above the word.)

Here are a couple more examples:

قابَلْتُ الطَّالِبَ الجَّديدَ

/qaabaltu iTTaaliba ijjadeeda/

I met the new student.

(Note here that both the object الطَّالِبَ/iTTaaliba/student and the adjective الجَّديدَ/ijjadeeda /new are in the accusative.)

Well, that’s all we have for today’s lesson on the accusative. Easy peasy, huh? Please join us next time as conclude our series on case endings in Arabic by looking at the genitive case.

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