Description

I‘rāb (إﻋﺮﺍﺏ IPA: [ʔiʕraːb]) is an Arabic termfor the system of nominal and adjectival suffixes of ClassicalArabic. These suffixes are written in fully vocalized Arabic texts,notably the Qur’ān or texts written for children or Arabiclearners, and they are articulated when a text is formally readaloud, but they do not survive in any spoken dialect of Arabic.Even in Literary Arabic, these suffixes are often not pronounced inpausa (الوقف al-waqf); i.e. when the word occurs at the end of thesentence, in accordance with certain rules of Arabic pronunciation.(That is, the nunation suffix -n is always dropped at the end of asentence or line of poetry; the vowel suffix may or may not be,depending on the requirements of metre.) Depending on the knowledgeof i‘rāb, some Arabic speakers may omit case endings when readingout in Modern Standard Arabic, thus making it similar to spokendialects.

Many Arabic textbooks for foreigners teach Arabic without aheavy focus on i‘rāb, either omitting the endings altogether oronly giving a small introduction. Arabic without case endings mayrequire a different and strict word order, similar to spoken Arabicdialects.

Details:

- Etymology-Grammatical cases
- Nominative case
- Accusative case
- Genitive case