Arabic verbs appear in several forms, with Form I following the basic pattern fa'ala (فعل) in the past tense. For example, kataba (كتب, to write) becomes katabtu (كتبت) for 'I wrote', with the suffix -tu marking the first-person singular. Other past tense examples include dhahabat (ذهبت) meaning 'she went', sharibat (شربت) meaning 'she drank', akulnaa (أكلنا) meaning 'we ate', and qara'at (قرأت) meaning 'she read'. The present tense uses prefixes to indicate person: ya- for third-person masculine singular (yadhhabu, يذهب, he goes), ta- combined with suffixes for second person (tadraseen, تدرسين, you feminine study), and a- for first-person singular (aktub, أكتب, I write).
Arabic pronouns are gendered and number-sensitive. The first-person singular 'I' is ana (أنا), used by both males and females. The second-person masculine singular is anta (أنتَ) and the feminine is anti (أنتِ), with antuma (أنتما) for two people and antum (أنتم) for masculine plural or mixed groups. The first-person plural 'we' is naHnu (نحن), the masculine plural 'they' is hum (هم), the feminine plural 'they' is hunna (هنّ), and the dual 'they' (two people) is humaa (هما). Notably, Arabic does not have a separate pronoun for 'it'; instead, third-person singular verbs agree with the gender of the noun, using huwa (هو) for masculine and hiya (هي) for feminine.
Some additional verbs follow slightly altered patterns. Form II follows fa''ala (فعّل), which doubles the middle root letter, as in kattaba meaning 'to make someone write'. Hollow verbs like arada (to want) shift their vowels, giving uridu (أُرِيدُ) or ureed (أريد) for 'I want'. Defective verbs like jaa'a (to come) drop a weak root letter, so 'I come' becomes aTi (آتي) and 'she comes' becomes ta'ti (تَأْتِي). Together, these patterns allow learners to conjugate a wide range of verbs across persons, tenses, and forms.