Arabic grammar has its own internal logic that doesn't map neatly onto English, but a handful of core ideas — sentence types, noun gender, and how the definite article behaves — cover most of what trips learners up early on.
Arabic sentences generally fall into two types. A nominal sentence starts with a noun or pronoun, and in the present tense often doesn't need a verb "to be" at all — الكتاب جديد ("the book [is] new") is a complete, correct sentence with no word for "is." A verbal sentence starts with a verb, and is especially common in more formal Modern Standard Arabic.
Arabic nouns are either masculine or feminine — there's no neuter. The most reliable clue is the letter taa marbuta (ة): a noun ending in it is feminine the large majority of the time. It's a strong heuristic, not an absolute rule — a handful of feminine nouns don't carry it, and a few masculine ones do — but it's genuinely useful for a fast first guess.
Arabic's definite article is ال (al-), attached directly to the front of a noun. How it's pronounced depends on the first letter of that noun:
This is a pronunciation rule, not a spelling rule — recognizing it early saves a lot of confusion between how a word looks and how it's actually said aloud.
Classical and formal Modern Standard Arabic often favor verb-subject-object order, while everyday spoken Arabic across most regional dialects commonly uses subject-verb-object, closer to English sentence order. Both are grammatically correct; which one feels natural depends on how formal the context is.
A nominal sentence starts with a noun or pronoun and often has no verb at all in the present tense (Arabic doesn't need a word for "is" — "the book [is] new" is a complete sentence without it). A verbal sentence starts with a verb, and is common in Modern Standard Arabic's more formal register.
There's a strong, reliable pattern: nouns ending in taa marbuta (ة) are feminine most of the time. It's not a universal rule — some feminine nouns don't carry that ending, and a few masculine nouns do — but it correctly predicts gender often enough to be a genuinely useful starting heuristic.
They describe how the definite article al- ("the") is pronounced. Before moon letters, al- is pronounced as written. Before sun letters, the "l" sound assimilates into the following consonant, so al-shams ("the sun") is actually pronounced ash-shams. The spelling doesn't change, only the pronunciation.
Not as strictly. Classical and formal Modern Standard Arabic often favor verb-subject-object order, while everyday spoken Arabic across most dialects commonly uses subject-verb-object, closer to English. Both orders are grammatically valid; which one sounds natural depends on register and context.
See also: Learn Arabic · Arabic Verbs · Arabic Vocabulary