Personal pronouns in Arabic
There are three grammatical numbers in Arabic – single, double and plural. In this case, grammatical persons divide in the same way, and additionally they divide by gender! Where the sex is not clearly visible, there is a division between the male and female versions. Nowadays, the double number is used less and less frequently in colloquial speech and gradually begins to fade away. This is a natural linguistic process. It was the same in Polish, for example, where there was also a double number, but it disappeared completely. Personal pronouns in Arabic are an interesting phenomenon.
Personal pronouns
MSA currently uses 15 personal pronouns. 5 in the singular, 5 in the double and 5 in the plural. The pronoun ‘we’ is identical for the double and the plural. All of these “people” are used depending on who we want to talk about – the same way as it is in different languages.
| SINGULAR | PRONUNCIATION | |
|---|---|---|
| I | أَنَا | |
| you (male) | أَنْتَ | |
| you (female) | أَنْتِ | |
| he | هُوَ | |
| she | هِيَ | |
| DUAL | ||
| we (2) | نَحْنُ | |
| you (2) | أَنْتُمَا | |
| they (male) (2) | هُمَا | |
| they (female) (2) | هُمَا | |
| PLURAL | ||
| we | نَحْنُ | |
| you (male) | أَنْتُمْ | |
| you (female) | أَنْتُنَّ | |
| they (male) | هُمْ | |
| they (female) | هُنَّ | |