Lesson 3 of 16 · Every word is one of three things
Masculine and feminine, one, two and many
التَّذْكِير وَالتَّأْنِيث · الْعَدَد
After this lesson: Read the ending of a noun to tell whether it is feminine, and whether it is one, two or many.
Every Arabic noun is either masculine or feminine — not only people. The usual sign of a feminine noun is the tied tāʾ at its end, ة, as in jannah (garden) and sūrah. Some feminine words carry no sign at all and simply are feminine by usage: al-arḍ (the earth), al-shams (the sun), nafs (a soul).
Arabic also counts in three, not two. Singular is the bare noun. Dual — exactly two — adds -āni or -ayni: jannatāni, two gardens. Plural — three or more — comes in two shapes: a sound plural that adds an ending, as in al-ʿālamīn and al-muslimāt, and a broken plural that rearranges the letters inside the word, as in kitāb becoming kutub.
The dual is worth knowing because the Qur'an uses it precisely. Sūrat al-Raḥmān promises jannatāni — two gardens, exactly two, not a vague many.
In the Qur'an
وَلِمَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِۦ جَنَّتَانِ
wa-li-man khāfa maqāma rabbihī jannatān
And for the one who fears standing before his Lord are two gardens.
Notice. Jannatān is dual — the ending -ān says 'exactly two' with no number word needed.
إِذَا زُلْزِلَتِ ٱلْأَرْضُ زِلْزَالَهَا
idhā zulzilati l-arḍu zilzālahā
When the earth is shaken with its quaking.
Notice. Al-arḍ has no tied tāʾ, yet it is feminine — which is why the verb before it is zulzilat, with its own feminine ending.
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.
What does the ending of jannatān tell you?
Which is a broken plural?
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.