Lesson 4 of 16 · Every word is one of three things
Pronouns, standing alone and attached
الضَّمَائِر
After this lesson: Read the little endings that mean my, your, his, our — and spot the standalone pronouns.
Arabic has pronouns that stand alone — huwa (he), anta (you), naḥnu (we) — and pronouns that attach to the end of a word as a short suffix. The attached ones are everywhere in the Qur'an, and once you know six of them a great deal of the text opens up.
Attached to a noun they mean possession: rabb (a lord) becomes rabbī (my Lord), rabbuka (your Lord), rabbihi (his Lord), rabbanā (our Lord). Attached to a verb they mean the object: hadā (he guided) becomes hadānā (he guided us).
The six worth memorising now: -ī my, -ka your (to a man), -ki your (to a woman), -hu his, -hā her/its, -nā our or us.
In the Qur'an
قُلْ أَعُوذُ بِرَبِّ ٱلنَّاسِ
qul aʿūdhu bi-rabbi n-nās
Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind.
Notice. Here the 'I' is not a separate word at all — it is built into the verb aʿūdhu itself.
فَصَلِّ لِرَبِّكَ وَٱنْحَرْ
fa-ṣalli li-rabbika wa-nḥar
So pray to your Lord and sacrifice.
Notice. Rabbika is one word carrying two: 'Lord' plus the attached -ka, 'your'.
Watch out. An attached pronoun makes a noun definite. That is why rabbika never takes al- and never takes tanwīn — 'your Lord' is already a specific Lord.
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 -nā in rabbanā mean?
Why does rabbika not carry al-?
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.