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64 The verbs call for no further remark beyond the fact that there is a feminine form of the 3rd person sing., present and past tense. Thus, "she writes," hīya tiktib instead of yiktib; "she wrote," hīya katabet instead of katab; similarly, "she was," kānet instead of kan. Collective nouns also take this feminine singular form; as El gemāl tākul, the camels eat.

THE PRONOUN.

Except when governing the verb or as the subject of a sentence, the forms of personal pronouns ana, inta, huwa, &c., are not used, but another form as in 'andi, I have, quoted above; similarly, taḥti, under me, ganbi, by my side.

To express possession the word bit'a, belonging to, is used. Thus,

But, unless it is intended to lay stress on the possessive, this word is generally replaced by the suffix. Thus,

The dative form of the personal pronoun is made with the prefix l:—

FORMATION OF PLURALS.

The regular form of plural is made by the addition of -īn to masculine words and -āt to feminine. The feminine word generally ends in ة (see p. 10) and is transcribed as ah when it is a simple noun and īeh when a derivative noun. It therefore causes little difficulty, and being feminine in accordance with previously conceived ideas on the subject, one is not troubled with unreasonable genders. As a set-off to this, the plurals of nouns disport themselves under so many guises that the above rule of adding -īn and -āt is chiefly of use in the formation of the plurals of adjectives and of feminine derivative nouns. The plurals of nouns ring the following kinds of changes,