حروف الجرّ وبيان المكان
Arabic · Key Stage 2 · The School
The common ones
A handful of prepositions carry most of the work: fi means in, min means from, ila means to, ala means on, maʿa means with, and li means for or belonging to. Learning these six early unlocks a great deal of ordinary description, because almost every sentence about where or whose uses one of them.
What follows a preposition
A preposition puts the noun after it into the GENITIVE case, which usually shows as a kasra — a short i vowel — on the end. So the preposition does not only add meaning; it changes the ending of the next word. Noticing that ending is often how a reader works out that a preposition came before it.
Saying where something is
Arabic can state where something is without any verb at all: al-kitabu ala al-maktab — the book is on the desk. There is no word for is. Putting a definite noun next to a phrase of place is enough, and the reader supplies the rest. This is the nominal sentence you already know, with a preposition doing the second half.
الكِتابُ عَلَى الطاوِلةِ — the book is on the table. تَحْتَ الطاوِلةِ — under the table. في الحَقيبةِ — in the bag. مَعَ أَحْمَد — with Ahmad. Now notice the last word each time: after a preposition the noun takes a KASRA ending, every time. That is the preposition doing something to the noun after it, which is why they are worth learning as a group.