Lesson 8 of 16 · Words joined into phrases
This and that
أَسْمَاء الْإِشَارَة
After this lesson: Read hādhā, hādhihi and dhālika, and tell pointing from describing.
Hādhā points at something near and masculine; hādhihi at something near and feminine; dhālika at something distant or elevated; tilka at a distant feminine thing.
There is a neat distinction hiding here. If the word after the pointer carries al-, the pointer and the noun form one unit — 'this Book'. If the word after it has no al-, you are reading a full sentence — 'this is a book'. A single article decides between a phrase and a statement.
Dhālika al-kitāb at the opening of al-Baqarah is the first kind, and the choice of the far pointer for a Book in the reader's hands is itself read as a mark of its elevation.
In the Qur'an
ذَٰلِكَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبُ لَا رَيْبَ ۛ فِيهِ
dhālika l-kitābu lā rayba fīh
That is the Book about which there is no doubt.
Notice. The far pointer used for what is closest — distance here signals rank, not space.
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
qul huwa llāhu aḥad
Say: He is Allah, One.
Notice. The same test with a pronoun: huwa followed by a noun makes a sentence, not a phrase.
Check yourself
Nothing is scored or saved here — answering is how the rule sticks. When you want a score, the same checks are drilled to mastery below.
Hādhā kitābun — what does this mean?
Why is dhālika, the far pointer, used for the Qur'an in al-Baqarah 2:2?
Word morphology, grammar and syntax trees are shown by the Quranic Arabic Corpus (corpus.quran.com), the annotated linguistic resource developed at the University of Leeds.