2.5 The Place Pattern: مَفْعَل — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read the place shape on sight and say that مَكْتَب , مَدْرَسَة and مَسْجِد are one pattern, not three unrelated words. Build the place of any form I verb, so that the verb for playing gives مَلْعَب and the verb for entering gives مَدْخَل . Tell the place shape apart from the done-to shape of 2.4, which also begins with a mim. Read the words on a street sign, a shop front and a ticket, most of which are on this one pattern. Recognise a longer place word such as مُسْتَشْفَى as the same idea built on a different verb form. Prerequisites : 2.4 and the two participle shapes If you were dropped in an Arab city tomorrow with the six lessons of this volume and nothing else, this is the one that would get you around. Arabic names buildings by what happens inside them, and it does so with a single pattern, applied to whatever verb fits. A school is a place of studying, a kitchen is a place of cooking, a mosque is a place of prostration, a restaurant is a place of feeding, a stadium is a place of playing. The pattern is so productive that a reader who knows it can read signs for buildings that were invented long after Arabic was, because a new building simply takes the pattern on a suitable root. English does something faintly similar with -ery, in bakery and brewery and fishery, but it runs out almost at once: a place where you eat is not an eatery in any serious register, a place where you pray is not a prayery, and a place where planes fly from is an airport, which is two nouns glued together. Arabic does not glue nouns together and does not need to. It has the shape. The root family Mim in front, a short a in the middle The place shape is a mim, then the first root consonant with a sukun on it, then the second with a short a, then the third. That is all. The feminine ending can be added and often is, and a small group of roots takes a short i instead of a short a in the middle, which the next section handles. The root of writing gives the word you have known since the first lesson of this volume: a place of writing, which is a desk and, in the modern language, an office. Add the feminine ending and the same place becomes a library. That pair is the one to keep in your head, because it shows both halves of the rule at once and because the two words sit next to each other in every dictionary. The root of studying gives the word for a school, with the feminine ending. The root of cooking gives the word for a kitchen, without it. There is no rule that says which roots take the ending; it is learned with the word, exactly like the middle vowel of the verb in 2.3. But the ending never changes the meaning of the shape. Both are places. The group that takes an i A minority of roots build their place noun with a short i in the middle instead of a short a. The word for a mosque, which you met in 2.3, is one of them: it is the place of the verb meaning to prostrate oneself, and its middle vowel is an i. So is the ordinary word for a sitting room in some dialects, and so are a handful of other very old words. There is a tradition among Arab grammarians that ties the choice to the middle vowel of the present tense of the verb, and it works for most of the words it is applied to. It is not worth learning at this stage, for the same reason the tendencies in 2.3 were not worth relying on: the exceptions are frequent and the words are few enough to learn one by one. What matters here is that you are not surprised by the i, and that you read a word with a mim, a sukun and a short i in the middle as a place. Two mims, two shapes The done-to shape of the last lesson also begins with a mim, and beginners confuse the two for about a week. The difference is in what comes before the last consonant. The done-to has a long u there; the place has a short a, or nothing at all. Say the two aloud from the same root and the difference is immediate: the word for something written has a long vowel in the second syllable and the word for a desk does not. There is a second and more reliable difference, which is that the done-to shape is an adjective and the place shape is a noun. If the word is being used to describe something, it is the done-to; if it is being used as a thing, and especially if it has the definite article on it and a preposition in front, it is a place. In the sentences below, every one of the place words follows a preposition or a demonstrative, and that is not a coincidence. The table Eleven places, and the verbs they came from Every word in the second column is on the same pattern, with or without the feminine ending. The verb in the third column is the plain past, which is how a dictionary would list the root. Place Root Verb it comes from Literally English مَفْعَل ف-ع-ل فَعَلَ the name of the shape itself place of doing مَكْتَب ك-ت-ب كَتَبَ place of writing desk, office مَكْتَبَة ك-ت-ب كَتَبَ place of writing, with the feminine ending library, bookshop مَدْرَسَة د-ر-س دَرَسَ place of studying school مَطْبَخ ط-ب-خ طَبَخَ place of cooking kitchen مَسْجِد س-ج-د سَجَدَ place of prostration, with the i in the middle mosque مَصْنَع ص-ن-ع صَنَعَ place of making factory مَطْعَم ط-ع-م طَعِمَ place of feeding restaurant مَلْعَب ل-ع-ب لَعِبَ place of playing playing field, stadium مَدْخَل د-خ-ل دَخَلَ place of entering entrance مَتْحَف ت-ح-ف أَتْحَفَ place of precious gifts museum Read the first column down the page. Eleven words, one rhythm, and four of them are buildings you could walk into this afternoon. Then read the fourth column down the page in English and notice how much of the meaning of each word is already in the shape. The long one Two of the commonest place words in a modern city are longer than this pattern, and the word for a hospital is the one you will meet first. It begins with a mim and a short u, then has three more syllables, and it is the place noun not of form I but of form X, the form that means to seek something for yourself. The verb behind it means to seek a cur