3.1 GENDER – الجنس

 

Gender is the second of the four properties of the اسم. Every word in the Arabic language is either masculine (مُذَكَّر) or feminine (مُؤَنَّث). The DEFAULT GENDER for an اسم is MASCULINE. There are six categories of feminine words. If a word does not fall into one of these six categories, it is masculine.

1. 1      BIOLOGICALLY FEMININE

This refers to words that are feminine by nature.

 

1. 2      WORDS THAT END IN ة OR اء OR ى

When a word has THREE LETTERS and those three letters are followed by اء or ى, the word is considered feminine. In the word ذِكْرَى for example, there are three letters before the ى .This word is feminine. In the word هُدًا, on the other hand, there are only two letters before the ى .This word is not considered feminine. As for the ة, almost all words that end in a ة are feminine.

 

1. 3      BODY PARTS IN PAIRS

Body parts that come in pairs are feminine, both in the dual and singular forms.

 

1. 4      SPECIFIC NAMES OF PLACES

Most specific names of places are feminine. The word “school” or “masjid” is not a specific name of a place.

 

There are few exceptions to this rule.

1. 5      NON-HUMAN PLURALS

All non-human plurals are considered feminine. This holds true regardless of the gender of the singular form. Take a look at the chart below. The singular form of سيارات is سيارة (f). The singular form of مساجد is مسجد (m), and the singular form of كتب is كتاب (m).

 

1. 6      FEMININE BECAUSE THE ARABS SAID SO

There is a set of words that do not fall into any of the categories above and are feminine only because the Arabs decided to treat them as such. The Arabic term for this

is مُؤَنَّثٌ سَمَاعِيٌّ.

 

The following story will help you remember these words and their definitions.

➢ DRILL 1 What is the gender of the following words? Why?