162. Verbs with initial wāw. We have seen several examples of these in our reading materials, and the essential thing about them has already been said, namely that they lose the initial radical altogether (in the overwhelming majority of cases) in the muḍāri': wajada, yajidu. It merely remains here to emphasise certain points. First, this peculiarity applies only to Form I, and not even to the Passive muḍāri' of that form. (In all other situations, these verbs are essentially standard, though the w, unvocalised, will of course often be sounded as ū or au: muslim, but mūjid (for muwjid); maktūb, but maujūd (for mawjūd). Special attention should perhaps be drawn to four phonetic phenomena, as exemplified in: ījāb, IV maṣdar, for the impossible iwjāb; the difficulty of making a Form VII from these verbs (see para. 139); their assimilation of the w to the t in Form VIII (para. 140); and the form istījāb, X maṣdar, for the impossible istiwjāb.) Secondly, that such verbs normally take ī as the middle vowel of the muḍāri' (save with ḥ and 'ain as indicated in para. 92). Thirdly, that this loss of the radical makes it relatively simple to form the Imperative: yajidu/yajid/jid (i.e. no helping hamza is needed).

163. Verbs with hamza as a radical. The basic problem here is the general one of how to write the hamza in a given situation, and on that matter all that can be said effectively in an elementary work has been said in para. 53, particularly in subparas, (b) and (c).