أَمْرٌ / نَهْيٌ Introduction

Having Learned present-tense, we can now delve into two derivative forms of the present-tense (اَلْفِعْلُ الْمُضَارِعُ) called:

a) Commanding (فِعْلٌ أَمْرٌ) – فِعْلٌ أَمْرٌ (Command) is an order given to someone to carry out a specific action.

b) Forbidding (فَعْلٌ نَهْيٌ) – فَعْلٌ نَهْيٌ (Forbidding) is used to prevent someone from carrying out an action.

Therefore, based on the definitions above, we can make the following observations about commanding and forbidding:

• You can’t command/forbid in the paste-tense. This makes sense because a person cannot be commanded or forbid someone to do something in the past.
• You can’t command yourself. Commanding and forbidding are specifically directed at another, not the self. You can’t command the first person.
• You can’t command/forbid someone who’s not there. Someone who is not present cannot be made to do something, nor can they be forbidden from doing something. You can’t command the third person.
• A grammatical command isn’t alwaysreally a command. It could be:
  • Request
  • Suggestion
  • Motivation
  • Permission
  • Advice
  • Imperative

For example, if you ask a friend , ”should i buy this computer?” and your friend replies, ”Buy it”, This is a suggestion, although it sounds like a command. Similarly, if a teacher says, ”Go ahead and fail the test”, this is mostly likely sarcasm, not a command.