Arabic vocabulary
كُنْ is how you say “be” in Arabic. Hear it pronounced and see it used in real example sentences from classical texts below.
وصيرها مساكن الخلق تربيهم صغارًا وتضمهم رفاتا،
And He made it a dwelling for His creatures — raising them as children and gathering them as remains.
كن — Be!. A command-form verb, 'Be!', the shortest order, addressed to creation. It is the bare command shape with the 'you' built in; this is the divine word that brings things into being.
From: God's Sovereignty in Creation →وَكُنْ بَاحِثًا عَنْ دَفَائِنِ هَوَاهَا لَعَلَّكِ تَسْلَمِينَ،
And be searching for the hidden treasures of its desire, that perhaps you may be saved,
وكن — and be. A command fronted by 'wa-' (and), built from the verb 'to be', so it orders the listener into a continuing state rather than a single act. It sets up 'be (in the state of)...', with the participle that follows naming the state it ushers in.
From: Guidance for the Seeker →وَلَا تَكُنْ مِمَّنْ أَدْخَلَهُ طَلَبُ الْحِدَاثِ النَّارَ،
Do not be among those whom the pursuit of novelty has led into the Fire.
تَكُنْ — you be. This is the verb 'to be' in its clipped command (jussive) shape, pushed there by the prohibiting 'la' before it, with a 'you' addressee built in. The altered ending is the grammatical signal that this is a 'do not be...' prohibition; what the listener is warned away from being follows next.
From: Sincerity in Prophetic Knowledge →OpenArabic teaches words like كُنْ through real bilingual reading with native audio and spaced-repetition practice.
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