How to Learn Arabic: Part 6

At some point (but not before you learn Arabic!) you will have to start working through a naḥw book. Mastering naḥw is the final stage of your Arabic education.

The first thing you should know about naḥw is that it's messy! After you've moved beyond the basic books, the more advanced naḥw books use a great deal of logic and give a huge amount of attention to detailed poetry analysis and its implications for grammar. The classical scholars of naḥw were also concerned, in so small way, in disproving competing grammatical analyses and theories, which can lead to very abstract and difficult to follow passages in their books.

In this section, I'm only giving advice about getting started in naḥw. If you've got this far, I'm sure you're more than capable of deciding how best to complete this final stage.

Start with a modern, basic naḥw book. Something like al-Durūs al-Naḥwiyyah, three books in a single volume, will introduce you to the naḥw terminology used by the Arabic grammarians, and give you a basic grounding in the science of i’rāb (parsing sentences).

I strongly advise against studying anything classical in the beginning (e.g. Qaṭr al-Nadā) - it will be far too detailed, and it’s unlikely that you’ll derive significant benefit from it.

You should also use Wright’s Grammar and A Grammar of Classical Arabic (Fischer) in conjunction with your naḥw texts - they will give you the corresponding English terminology, and help you apply the very theoretical information found in the naḥw books.

As you work through naḥw texts, particularly as you get to the more advanced books, always try to identify how what you're learning can be applied. Ask yourself questions like, How do subtle differences in the naḥw analysis of different structures translate into a difference in meaning? Only in this manner will you truly benefit from a study of naḥw.

How to Learn Arabic

6 - Naḥw (Classical Arabic Syntax)