COUNTING TO TWO - DUAL

Learn Arabic Language can be fun. One of the area to be learned is mussanna. Musanna (المثنئ ) is the term used in Arabic to indicate the number of an object is two. In English, we use ' a car' to indicate one car and ' two cars' to show that there number of cars is two.However, the Arabic grammar works slightly different. Arabic has three groups instead of two for English ( Singular and Plural.). The Arabic groupings are as follows:

1. One - Singular مفرد

e.g one car................. سيارة....sayyarah.....

      one book...........كتاب   ......kitab

2. Two - two -      المثنئ

e.g two cars................سيارتان....... sayyaratin

     two books............كتابان........... kitabanin

3. three and more - jama' - جمع

To change a singular ( مفرد ) is by putting the suffix   ان or ون . The last    ن to be read with kasrah (like having the letter i and the marking is at the bottom.

e.g   ا  

    در١جة     a bicycles

   در١جةان    two bicycles

  قلم        a pen

  قلمان    two pens

What is considered not a Mussanna  ( الثني )

1.Word to Indicate one... mufrad... مفرد

2. Word to indicate many... jama' ... جمع

3. Word to indicate proper nouns, (nama Khas), name of person, plac.

  e.g If a person's name is Sha'ban... it is not a mussanna even though the ending letters are alif and nun.

اشعبان - not the alif and nun at the end, but because it is the name of a person, it is not considered mussanna. Hope this sharing of learning arabic language is beneficial.