12,347 Verbs in the Quran
What Do They Share in Common?
Do you know that according to the Quranic Arabic Corpus, there is a whopping 19,356 verbs in the Quran? That’s almost 20k.
Since there are 10 main forms of verbs in Arabic, that number would average out to about 2000 verbs for each form.
But that’s not true. Why? According to The Quickest Way to the Quran, the number of verbs belonging to the main form (let’s call it Form 1) is 12,347, i.e. 63% of all verbs. Which also means, the other 9 Verb Forms comprise only 37% of all verbs.
So what, you may ask.
Here’s the first so-what: To begin mastering verbs in Arabic, the optimal way is to just focus on Form 1 first, which is more than half the amount of all the other nine forms. But how does one even focus on 12,347 verbs, to begin with?
Well, dividing it further, 12,347 is equal to 5,918 past verbs + 5,248 present verbs + 1,181 command verbs. Hmmm, that seems more manageable, but the numbers are still in the thousands.
So, here comes second so-what: While there are 1,181 command verbs, for example, their unrepeated number is actually only 149. Ahhh, now we are going somewhere, don’t you see?
Which means, familiarising yourself with 1,181 command verbs requires you to only cover about 10% of that number, i.e. just 149 verbs.
(But don’t be too happy yet - more details in the next post).
Well not just that, because…
The third so-what is that all command verbs (of the main form) belong to only 3 key verb patterns. In other words, you can pin down any command verb based on just knowing 3 master patterns.
But what about past and present? Likewise, past and present has 3 master patterns each, making them 9 key patterns in total.
Again, so what?
Well, it means that 63% of all verbs in the Quran are governed by just 9 key patterns. So rather than trying to master all the 50 patterns of all 10 Verb Forms (which most of us students are guilty of), the wise thing to do is to focus only on the first 9 key patterns first (which still takes work, but not as hard as trying to game all 50 at one go). It makes the other 41 patterns much easier to decipher, later. If you don’t get these first 9, it’s not worth going further in gaming patterns.
In the next post, I’ll share examples of the above.
In the meantime, if you wish to take this further by checking out the upcoming summer program on 9 Key Patterns, you may join the waitlist.
So what if you join the waitlist? You’ll be the first to get full details, and first perks should you decide to join this puzzle-based 10-min-per-day-for-10-weeks program.
See you in the next post.