ʾIʿrab

ʾIʿrāb (إِعْرَاب, IPA: [ʔiʕraːb]) is an Arabic term for the declension system of nominal, adjectival, or verbal suffixes of Classical Arabic to mark grammatical case. These suffixes are written in fully vocalized Arabic texts, notably the Qur’ān or texts written for children or Arabic learners, and they are articulated when a text is formally read aloud, but they do not survive in any spoken dialect of Arabic. Even in Literary Arabic, these suffixes are often not pronounced in pausa (ٱلْوَقْف al-waqf); i.e. when the word occurs at the end of the sentence, in accordance with certain rules of Arabic pronunciation. (That is, the nunation suffix -n is generally dropped at the end of a sentence or line of poetry, with the notable exception of the nuniyya; the vowel suffix may or may not be, depending on the requirements of metre.) Depending on the knowledge of ʾiʿrāb, some Arabic speakers may omit case endings when reading aloud in Modern Standard Arabic, thus making it similar to spoken dialects. Many Arabic textbooks for foreigners teach Arabic without a heavy focus on ʾiʿrāb, either omitting the endings altogether or only giving a small introduction. Arabic without case endings may require a different and fixed word order, similar to spoken Arabic dialects.

Etymology

The term literally means 'making [the word] Arabic'. It is the stem IV masdar of the root ‘-r-b (ع-ر-ب), meaning "to be fluent", so ʾiʿrāb means "making a thing expressed, disclosed or eloquent". The term is cognate to the word Arab itself.