# The teachers are clever



## iwani

Assalamuakaikum I would like to know whether these two sentences are correct grammatically

The teachers are clever

المدرّسون ذكيّون

المدرّسون اذكياء


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## Crimson-Sky

They're both okay.


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## iwani

Syukran Crimson. I am rather confused about when to use sound or broken

What about these three, are they all correct?



> السّفراء اقوياء
> السّفيرون قويّون
> السّفيرات قويّات



1. The ambassadors are strong 
2. The male ambassadors are strong
3. The female ambassadors are strong
4. Can the 1st Arabic sentence also mean "The male ambassadors are strong" and "The male and female [maybe there are 3 male and 1 female] ambassadors are strong")


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## Crimson-Sky

سَفِيرٌ pl. سُفَرَاءٌ 
سَفِيرَةٌ (for female ambassador) pl.سَفِيرَاتٌ
 السّفراء اقوياء(can refer to male ambassadors or to mixed male and female ambassadors) 
 السّفيرات قويّات


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## iwani

Thanks so much Crimson, you are way too kind  This is my last reply to this matter insyaAllah

Can I conclude that in the:



> *The teachers are clever*
> ذكيّون / اذكياء is a predicate therefore it could be in the sound or broken form. And most importantly because the subject المدرّسون is a sound plural (by default as shown in the dictionary) making the predicate able to take the sound plural form too
> 
> *The ambassadors are strong *
> Where in this sentence, the dictionary shows the subject's plural is in the broken plural form which makes more sense for the predicate to be in broken plural form too


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## dkarjala

iwani said:


> Thanks so much Crimson, you are way too kind  This is my last reply to this matter insyaAllah
> 
> Can I conclude that in the:



I don't think I've ever heard or seen ذكيّون*, have either of you encountered it? It's not a _nisba_, but rather an adjective on the _wazn _فَعيل, of which very few take the sound plural suffix.


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## iwani

The sound masculine plural logic is a very confusing one to me. The textbook my class uses, David Cowan's Modern Literary Arabic covers only a tiny portion of the topic. However I found an extensive coverage of the topic via this link http://arabic.tripod.com/Nouns3.htm#masculine plural and what you said seemed legit dkarjala, I don't see word forms like ذكيّون in it


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## Crimson-Sky

iwani said:


> However I found an extensive coverage of the topic via this link http://arabic.tripod.com/Nouns3.htm#masculine plural and what you said seemed legit dkarjala, I don't see word forms like ذكيّون in it



What about مُعَلِّمُون ? It's the same as ذكيّون (read carefully what's directly under the title "masculine plural nouns" ) ;
مُعَلِّم-مُعَلِّمُون
In the same way :
ذَكِي-ذَكِيّون
However, the plural form "اذكياء" is more acceptable ; you should say "المدرّسون اذكياء".


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## iwani

Ahh yes. I missed it. Sorry Crimson and thanks  Will use the broken plural form!


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## dkarjala

Crimson-Sky said:


> What about مُعَلِّمُون ? It's the same as ذكيّون (read carefully what's directly under the title "masculine plural nouns" ) ;
> مُعَلِّم-مُعَلِّمُون
> In the same way :
> ذَكِي-ذَكِيّون



Well I'm not opposed to the form, your logic is a bit lacking since معلّم is an اسم فاعل, whose plural is normally formed with ـون like معلّمون، مسلمون، مشاهدون، محترفون etc. Nisba adjectives also are usually formed with ـون like مصريّون، etc.

As for ذكيّ, it is an adjective of the same shape as كبير. Just as you wouldn't say *كبيرون, you shouldn't say ذكيّون. 

I have found examples of ذكيّون on the web, but I never in a dictionary. I think it's a لغة . I know there are exceptions like كثيرون but I've never seen this one before.


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## Crimson-Sky

I don't see why my logic (if it's really a logic) is lacking ;ذَكِيّون (and so is كثيرون) is formed the same way محترفون (or any of the other examples) is formed. Where is the problem ? كبيرون is also okay. 
But I would prefer كِبار ; it's the most common. ذكيّون and كبيرون are okay but they are not widely accepted. Thus the broken form of these two.


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## dkarjala

Crimson-Sky said:


> I don't see why my logic (if it's really a logic) is lacking ;ذَكِيّون (and so is كثيرون) is formed the same way محترفون (or any of the other examples) is formed.



My point is that the جمع مذكر سالم is originally used for اسم الفاعل and نسبة. Since  ذكيّ is *not* an اسم فاعل or a نسبة it therefore cannot be compared with معلّم or other words with ون. Most likely, ذكيون and كبيرون are nothing more than common errors introduced by a shallow understanding of classical grammar. I am not really concerned with the existence of ون on the end of basic adjectives but they are innovations and probably don't belong in Classical or MSA. My perspective is not someone who 'knows' what is correct but rather that of a language historian.

People can certainly choose from any forms that are understood - but I would ask the question: if ذكيون and كبيرون are "OK", why aren't they in any dictionaries?


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## iwani

I'm sorry for causing a debate in here. I think I made the mistake of including ذكيون whereas in Hans Wehr dictionary, the broken plural is given. My teacher has advised us that in looking for the plural forms there's no shortcut until you've become fluent in Arabic. Hans Wehr will show you the plural form the word should take

Thanks guys for participating in my thread. You've inspired me to continue struggling to master Arabic! 

I have not started learning the Arabic grammar terms yet. We are just learning the grammar logic now ^_^

Make doa for me guys!


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## Crimson-Sky

dkarjala said:


> My point is that the جمع مذكر سالم is originally used for اسم الفاعل and نسبة. Since  ذكيّ is *not* an اسم فاعل or a نسبة it therefore cannot be compared with معلّم or other words with ون.



The sound masculine plural occurs on nouns and adjectives.


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## dkarjala

Crimson-Sky said:


> The sound masculine plural occurs on nouns and adjectives.



Only *certain *nouns and adjectives, however - this is all I'm trying to say. As for adjectives, in Classical Arabic it only occurs on the comparative (اجمعون etc) and the _nisba_, of which ذكي is neither.

Oh, and just to be clear, the back-and-forth between myself and Crimson-Sky is not meant to be a 'debate' about the form, but rather I am trying to clarify that there are limits to the use of the suffix ـون. You can't just put it on anything referring to plural human males - just as we decided أذكياء was the better form above. I have nothing but respect for my colleague Crimson-Sky and all his excellent answers on this forum.


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## iwani

MasyaAllah love both of your professionalism and knowledge. Thank you for sharing. It means a whole lot to me


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## iwani

Thanks to Crimson-Sky and dkarjala for your kindness in helping me. As a result of your generosity, I was able to create this exercise for my classmates and I. 

The link to the exercise if anyone's interested to see it
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...lension-nonrationalplural-nominalsentence.pdf


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## Abu Talha

dkarjala said:


> Only *certain *nouns and adjectives, however - this is all I'm trying to say. As for adjectives, in Classical Arabic it only occurs on the comparative (اجمعون etc) and the _nisba_, of which ذكي is neither.


Hi dkarjala
Thanks for an interesting discussion. I was unaware of this distinction. I did some research and I did find conditions for the applicability of the sound masculine plural. This site says:
2 ـ أ ـ أن يكون صفة لمذكر عاقل خالية من التاء ، وصالحة لدخول التاء عليها .

And Wright says that the sound masculine plural is formed from: (among others) verbal adjectives which form their fem. by adding ـة.

But in the Quran (24:26) you'll find خبيثون as the sound plural of خبيث. 

I found an interesting comment in the last post here: http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-237183.html


> لا يجوز أن تجمع بالواو والنون؛ لأنها فقدت شرطا من هذه الشروط، وهو الشرط الخامس مما ذكره الأستاذ (البدر القرمزي)، لأنها على وزن (فعيل) بمعنى مفعول؛ والأمين بمعنى المأمون، وهذا يختلف عن (فعيل) الذي بمعنى فاعل؛ فيصح مثلا أن تقول في جمع خبيث (خبيثون)، لكن لا يصح أن تقول في جمع جريح (جريحون).
> 
> قال السيوطي:
> وارفع بواو وبيا اجرر وانصبا .......... سالم جمع بشروط تجتبى
> من علم أو صفة المذكر .............. ذي العقل من تاء وتركيب عري
> ليست كأحمر ولا سكرانا ........... ولا صبور وجريح بانا


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## dkarjala

Abu Talha said:


> And Wright says that the sound masculine plural is formed from: (among others) verbal adjectives which form their fem. by adding ـة.



Ya hala yabu Talha, it's been too long.  Yes, participles too, though I didn't include those because I consider them a little more 'noun-y' (if you'll allow the expression) than the adjectives under discussion. Of course, Arabic doesn't really distinguish nouns and adjectives very strictly, so I suppose we shouldn't either.



> But in the Quran (24:26) you'll find خبيثون as the sound plural of خبيث.



Yes, the sound plurals show up on adjectives of stative verbs, but these always also have alternative and common broken plurals. It is likely that these usages of ون are a hold-over from a system predating or coexisting with Classical Arabic's poetic idiom, and have been replaced by broken plurals in all but a few common forms. Personally, I don't think it these forms are any more germane to the language than إمسِ , which is another exceptional form - in other words, there's no point making a rule about certain adverbs taking a _kasra_ all the time because of امسِ. ٍSimilarly, I feel that the overwhelming statistical evidence shows that these sound plurals are aberrations from the standard, even if they are actually older forms.



> I found an interesting comment in the last post here: http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-237183.html



Again, as I just said above, although this explanation works (he essentially says that you can use sound plurals on the فعيل forms of stative verbs - which holds for certain words but not all of them), it doesn't change the fact that broken plural variants still exist for these words and that they sound plural version is extremely rare in most cases.


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