كانَ was in Arabic
كانَ is how you say “was” in Arabic.
Arabic
English
The audio uses AI voices.
Example sentence
فكرةٌ كانت تختبئ،
A thought that was hiding,
كانَتْ it was
'was,' the past 'be'-verb, feminine for 'a thought.' It sets up a past-continuous with the verb next — 'was [in the act of] hiding.' Arabic builds 'was hiding' from 'was' plus a present verb.
The English is machine-translated.
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More example sentences
كان فيمن كان قبلكم رجل قتل تسعة وتسعين نفساً،
There was among those before you a man who killed ninety-nine people.
كانَ There was
This is the 'to be' of existence — 'there was' — opening a story. Its subject (a man) arrives later in the sentence. Used this way the verb simply asserts that something existed, and Arabic lets the thing that existed follow rather than precede.
كان فيمن كان قبلكم رجل قتل تسعة وتسعين نفساً،
There was among those before you a man who killed ninety-nine people.
كانَ he was
A second 'to be', inside the relative clause — 'those who WERE before you'. It places the people in the past. Its subject is the 'who' just before it, and the time-phrase follows.
بَلْ أَمْرُهُمْ كَانَ بِالضِّدِّ مِنْ أَمْرِ الرَّسُولِ، كَفِرْعَوْنَ وَنَمْرُودَ وَأَضْرَابِهِمَا
Rather, their matter was the opposite of that of the Messenger’s, like Pharaoh, Nimrod, and their like.
كَانَ he was
This is a past-tense form of the verb 'to be', 'was', here taking a singular subject for the collective 'affair'. Arabic's 'to be' verb sets a past state; the predicate it points to follows in the prepositional phrase.
وكَانَ ظُهُورُهُمْ مِنْ أَبْيَنِ الْأَدِلَّةِ عَلَى صِدْقِ الرُّسُلِ وَالْفَرْقِ بَيْنَ هَؤُلَاءِ وَبَيْنَهُمْ،
And their emergence is among the clearest evidence of the truthfulness of the Messengers and the difference between them and those false claimants.
وَكَانَ And was
The wa- opens the sentence, fused to a past-tense form of 'to be', 'and was', with a built-in subject for the coming noun. The connector ties this to the prior point, and the 'to be' verb sets a past state whose predicate follows.
كان ابن عباس إذا جلس مع أصحابه حدثهم ساعة ثم قال حمضونا، فيأخذ في أحاديث العرب ثم يعود يفعل ذلك مرارًا
When Ibn Abbas sat with his companions, he would talk to them for an hour and then say, 'Refresh us,' and would start discussing Arab stories before returning, doing this repeatedly.
كانَ he was
A past 'to be' verb opening a 'used to' frame: paired with the present verbs to come, it casts the whole as a past habit. It grips the name after it as its subject.
كان الرجل ممن كان قبلكم إذا ثقل عليه الحديث قال
A man among those before you, when the speech became heavy upon him, would say
كانَ he was
This past-tense verb of 'being' is doing special work: paired with a following present-tense verb it expresses a habit, something that used to happen repeatedly. It is not just 'he was' but the engine of 'he would regularly', and the listener reads the whole sentence as describing an ongoing past custom rather than a single event.
كان الرجل ممن كان قبلكم إذا ثقل عليه الحديث قال
A man among those before you, when the speech became heavy upon him, would say
كانَ he was
A second 'was' verb, opening the relative clause that describes the earlier group. Its 'he' subject is folded inside the verb, and like the first one it sets up a past-state description of the people who came before. Arabic happily repeats this being-verb to nest one past frame inside another.
إن كان عطاء بن يسار ليحدثنا أنا وأبا حازم حتى يبكينا ثم يحدثنا حتى يضحكنا،
Indeed, Ata ibn Yasar would narrate to us, to Abu Hazim and me, until he made us cry, then he would narrate until he made us laugh,
كانَ he was
This past 'was' verb teams up with the present-tense verbs further on to express a sustained habit: he used to do this over and over. It is the backbone of the 'would repeatedly' meaning, not a single past event, and it sets the habitual frame for the whole anecdote.
وكان لا يأخذ على المعالجة أجرا من الفقراء وأوساط الناس،
He would not accept a fee for treatment from the poor and middle-class people.
وَكانَ and he was
The 'wa-' continues the account, and the verb 'was' carries its own subject 'he'. Paired with the following negated present verb, it builds a 'he used to not...' habitual past, describing his standing practice.
رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ كُنَّ حِزْبَيْنِ
The women of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, were two groups.
كُنَّ they were
A past-tense verb whose ending marks a feminine 'they', a plural of women; Arabic has a dedicated plural-of-women form distinct from the masculine. Its subject, the wives, is understood from the earlier mention, and the verb sets up the count that follows.