Lesson 18 – الدَّرْسُ الثَّامِنَ عَشَرَ

How much- How many – كَمْ

• In this part of the lesson we will learn a new Interrogative Article, In-Shā’-Allâh (God willing). We have already learnt the use of Interrogative Articles in (Lesson 4 section 4).
• In this part of the lesson we will learn the rules for the Interrogative Article كَمْ meaning (How many?), In-Shā’-Allâh (God willing).  We have previously learnt that the noun following an interrogative article takes the nominative case i.e., single /đammah/ if the noun is definite and double /đammah/ if the nouns are indefinite. However this rule does not apply to the noun following the interrogative article كَمْ. The following rules are applied for the use of the interrogative article كَمْ:
• The noun following the interrogative article كَمْis mostly a singular indefinite noun e.g.:

كَمْ كِتَابًا عِنْدَكَ؟ i.e., How many books do you have?
كَمْ كُرَّاسَةً مَعَكَ؟ i.e., How many notebooks are with you?
The noun following the interrogative article كَمْalways takes an accusative case i.e., /fatħatain/ double-/fatħah/ on the last letter. It must however be remembered that a masculine indefinite noun takes an /Alif/ along with /tanwīn/ in the accusative case but the feminine indefinite noun ending in the ة /tā’ marbūŧah/ does not take the /Alif/ - e.g.:

كَمْ قَمِيصًا هَذِهِ؟ i.e., How many shirts (masculine noun) are these?
كَمْ سَاعَةً فِي حَقِيبَتِكَ؟ i.e., How many watches (feminine noun) are in your bag?

• Let’s look at some more examples for a better understanding of the rule: