Lesson 2 of 16 · Every word is one of three things
How to spot a noun
عَلَامَات الاِسْم
After this lesson: Recognise a noun from its outward signs without knowing what it means.
You can identify a noun in Arabic before you know its meaning, because nouns carry marks that verbs never take. Four signs are enough for the Qur'an.
First, al- at the front: al-kitāb, al-ʿālamīn. Only a noun takes the definite article. Second, tanwīn — the doubled vowel written at the end, sounded -un, -an or -in: aḥadun, ṣamadun. Only a noun takes tanwīn. Third, a preposition in front of it: bi-smi, fī al-arḍ. Prepositions only ever precede nouns. Fourth, being called: yā ayyuhā al-nās.
Notice that al- and tanwīn never appear together. A noun is either definite (with al-, or with a pronoun attached, or a name) or indefinite (with tanwīn) — never both.
In the Qur'an
ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ
allāhu ṣ-ṣamad
Allah, the Self-Sufficient upon whom all depend.
Notice. Al-ṣamad wears the definite article, so it must be a noun.
بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm
In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Especially Merciful.
Notice. Bi is a preposition, so everything after it is a noun — and every noun here ends in -i because of it.
Watch out. The article is written ال but often not pronounced as 'al'. Before letters like r, s, sh, d and n it assimilates: al-raḥmān is read ar-raḥmān. The spelling does not change.
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.
Which of these proves a word is a noun?
Why can aḥadun not also take 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.