# noun / adjective



## Bilbo Baggins

Hello,

Is it possible to use nouns as adjectives in Arabic? For example, in English we have words like: dog bowl, wind tunnel, cat scratch.

Thanks.


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## Mahaodeh

In terms of terminology, in Arabic you only have verbs, nouns and particles. All other types fall under one of these. Hence, all adjectives are nouns. Moreover, the word itself is not fixed as an adjective - it's only an adjective because of the way it's used and if you use the same word in a different way it can become something else (ex. subject, object, adverb...etc.).

Now, naturally, there are nouns that you can't use as an adjective, not because of the way the word is structured but because of the meaning that just doesn't work as an adjective.

I hope this answers your question.


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## Gaed

I am not sure if nouns can be used as adjectives or not. However, you can use Mudaf Eleh in equivalent to dog bowl (صحن كلب), wind tunnel (قناة تهوية), cat scratch (خربشة قطة). 

We may hear additional voices....!!!!


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## Mahaodeh

The bottom line is, الصفة اسم، بصورة عامة تصبح الكلمة صفة بسبب موقعها من الجملة لا لأنها صفة بالأصل


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## Gaed

Mahaodeh said:


> The bottom line is, الصفة اسم، بصورة عامة تصبح الكلمة صفة بسبب موقعها من الجملة لا لأنها صفة بالأصل



How to use the following adjectives as nouns?
قبيح
جيد
طويل
قصير


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## إسكندراني

Gaed said:


> How to use the following adjectives as nouns?
> قبيح
> جيد
> طويل
> قصير


They are already nouns. In Arabic all adjectives are nouns, though not vice versa.
دخل قبيح. An Ugly [One] entered.
Ugly one is a noun here, not an adjective. The sentence has the same grammatical breakdown as
دخل رجل

دخل رجل قبيح. An Ugly Man entered. Here قبيح is a وصف=نعت=adjective because of its position in the sentence. An adjective is always removable without affecting the sentence's validity.


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## AndyRoo

Using a noun as an adjective is very rare in Arabic. I can only think of things like الرجل العنكبوت (Spiderman) and الرجل الوطواط (Batman).


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## إسكندراني

AndyRoo said:


> Using a noun as an adjective is very rare in Arabic. I can only think of things like الرجل العنكبوت (Spiderman) and الرجل الوطواط (Batman).


In Arabic all adjectives are nouns. Trying to transfer European grammar to Arabic only creates problems .


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## AndyRoo

إسكندراني said:


> In Arabic all adjectives are nouns. Trying to transfer European grammar to Arabic only creates problems .


 
All Arabic adjectives are nouns, yes. But not all nouns are adjectives - e.g. ريح، قطة، كلب.

However, in English the equivalent nouns can easily be used as adjectives, e.g. dog bowl, wind tunnel, cat scratch.


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## Bilbo Baggins

Thanks for your input, guys.


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## إسكندراني

AndyRoo said:


> However, in English the equivalent nouns can easily be used as adjectives, e.g. dog bowl, wind tunnel, cat scratch.


Those transfer as an إضافة (tunnel of wind, bowl of dog) not as adjectives - as discussed above.


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## clevermizo

إسكندراني said:


> Those transfer as an إضافة (tunnel of wind, bowl of dog) not as adjectives - as discussed above.



Well instead of using English terminology we can say that anything that is صفة is also اسم, however not all اسماء can be used like a صفة.

However, I suppose we could invent a نسبة to take care of this: صحن كلبي  though the إضافة is probably more idiomatic in this case صحن كلب.


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## rayloom

Ancient Arabic grammarians have made the distinction between nouns and adjectives.
Sibawayh for example explained that certain morphological forms only occur as adjectives, while others only for nouns.

There is a research on patterns which are exclusive for nouns or adjectives, it's called 
الأبنية المختصة باسم أو صفة في كتاب سيبويه 
By د. عبد الله بن ناصر القرني

This is a link to it:
http://www.dahsha.com/viewarticle.php?id=30820


Also the definition of a اسم in Arabic is:
"ما دل على انسان أو حيوان أو نبات أو جماد أو صفة من الصفات"

As such, to avoid such confusion, I think calling this اسم a substantive, which would include nouns and adjectives.


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## Abu Talha

Recently I was trying to construct a sentence, "I wear extra layers of clothing to keep warm." (See here.) I decided to use the word فَضْل meaning "excess", or "surplus". However, I was not sure how I would use it as an adjective in the plural. Should "extra layers of clothing" be:

طَبَقاتُ ثِيابٍ فَضْلَةٌ where the ة is added to feminize فَضْل, or

طَبَقاتُ ثِيابٍ فُضُولٌ where فُضول is the broken plural of فَضْل ,
or something else altogether?

Similarly, I remember have some trouble with the word نظير meaning "counterpart" which is usually used as a noun, e.g., ونظيره كذا وكذا. What if you want to use it in apposition, would you say

الوجهةُ النظيرةُ
and
الوجهاتُ النظيرةُ or الوجهاتُ النظيراتُ


Thanks.


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## إسكندراني

طبقات إضافية
طبقات زائدة عن العادة


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## Serafín33

Bilbo Baggins said:


> Hello,
> 
> Is it possible to use nouns as adjectives in Arabic? For example, in English we have words like: dog bowl, wind tunnel, cat scratch.
> 
> Thanks.


The problem with this analysis is that these aren't nouns being used as adjectives: these are noun+noun compound nouns. Arabic can use the annexation/إضافة construction in a similar way, such as _toothbrush_ being literally brush+teeth فرشاة أسنان furšātu ʔasnānin (indefinite), فرشاة الأسنان furšātu l-ʔasnāni (definite) (compare English itself with _tooth_+_brush_ > _toothbrush_).

If you meant to say if nouns can modify other nouns in Arabic, the answer is yes, and this is generally done with the annexation/إضافة construction, except for examples like Spiderman > الرجل العنكبوت (instead of رجل العنكبوت).

I should also point out that Arabic does have adjectives distinct from nouns, they agree in definiteness (taking ال or not), gender, number (and maybe case in the written language) with the noun they modify; while nouns _trigger_ these agreements. It's not like Tibetan, where adjective relations are often of the form "house of bigness" for "big house" (with no agreement, and thus adjectives are really like nouns), or like Cantonese where adjectives approximate verbs "bigging house ~ a house that is-big" (being able to take even some verbal markers, and thus adjectives are really like verbs cf. كبُر).

However, it is true that in the _Arabic grammatical tradition_ they aren't classified as being different than nouns (if anything a صفة is part of a subset of nouns), while in the Western grammatical tradition adjectives are in equal standing to nouns. This isn't the only place where the parts of speech between the two traditions differ, the Western tradition also has a whole encompassing category called "adverbs" for words used as the circumstance of the verb or the sentence and all words not fitting in any of the other categories (such as "yes" and "no"). The Western tradition distinguishes "prepositions" and "conjunctions", but the Arabic tradition puts them together in the category of حروف.

(For yet a third point of view, the Chinese before being influenced by Westerners contented themselves with just two parts-of-speech: 實字 sahtjih/shízì ("full words", أسماء +‎ أفعال) and 虛字 hēuijih/xūzì ("empty words", حروف)! Chinese linguists now use a classification identical to that of the Western tradition.)

I don't think it's worth discussing about Arabic having no distinct adjectives from nouns, as much as the classification of parts-of-speech between the Western and Arabic grammatical traditions being simply different.


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## Abu Talha

إسكندراني said:


> طبقات إضافية
> طبقات زائدة عن العادة


Thanks Iskenderany. But just as an exercise, could you use فَضْل and نظير as an adjective and add a ة for the feminine/plural?


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## no9ronaldo

AndyRoo said:


> Using a noun as an adjective is very rare in Arabic. I can only think of things like الرجل العنكبوت (Spiderman) and الرجل الوطواط (Batman).



Hi Andy, how about دولة عضو (a member country/state)?


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## إسكندراني

Abu Talha said:


> Thanks Iskenderany. But just as an exercise, could you use فَضْل and نظير as an adjective and add a ة for the feminine/plural?


I see no way to use فضل in a way that would make sense to a modern listener...
As for نظير I'm not sure what you're trying to say?


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