Which root is being used?

The method below was written several years ago, however it has now been replaced by an easy to use online resource, simply look up a verse and it displays Arabic-English word by word and click on the word and it will give you the root, which you can then look up in Project Root List: corpus.quran.com

If you can read and understand Arabic you should have little problem in identifying the root (i.e. component letters) of an Arabic word. However, if you are a complete beginner and you dont understand Arabic at all, it still shouldn't be too difficult. With a little practice, it becomes fairly easy.
The following is a description of a simple and easy to use 'root identification method'. Lets say you are reading an English translation of The Reading (al quran) and you wish to get a better (i.e. more accurate) understanding of a word or concept, what can you do?

1) First of all, note the chapter (sura) and verse (ayat) number. I will use an example, which will be 17:36 (i.e. chapter 17, verse 36). I could have chosen any verse from any chapter to demonstrate this method.

And follow not that of which you have not the knowledge; surely the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these, shall be questioned about that. [17:36, Shakir's translation, you can use any one]

2) Go to a transliteration website. Transliteration is simply a fancy word for pronounciation, i.e. an English equivalent of what the Arabic sounds like when said out loud. The following is the transliteration website I use:

www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/transliteration/index.html
OR download this software to use offline.

Once there, click on the relevant chapter (17) and find the relevant verse (36). In this case, you will find the following transliteration:

Wala taqfu ma laysa laka bihi AAilmun inna alssamAAa waalbasara waalfu-ada kullu ola-ika kana AAanhu mas-oolan.

3) So lets say you wish to find out what The Reading says about the "heart" (or more accurately, the Arabic word the translator has decided means "heart"), how can we identify the Arabic word used? By knowing the English equivalents of common words, we can home in on the word we are interested in. To view a list of commonly occurring words in The Reading, click on the following link:

mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/think-786/common_list.htm

I will now place the English translation and transliteration side by side for comparison, highlighting the commonly occuring words (ignore the brackets when identifying words):

And follow not that of which you have not the knowledge; surely the hearing and the sight and the heart, all of these, shall be questioned about that.

Wala taqfu ma laysa laka bihi AAilmun inna alssamAAa waalbasara waalfu-ada kullu ola-ika kana AAanhu mas-oolan.

As you can see after "surely" (inna) the first "the" (al) is attached to "hearing" so the Arabic word for "hearing" is likely to be "ssamAAa" (which is correct), then the Arabic says "waal" which is simply "and the" and this is attached to "basara" which is likely to mean "sight" (which is correct) and the last "waal" (and the) is attached to "fu-ada" so this is likely to be the word we are looking for (heart), which is correct.

So to home in on the correct word for that verse, we only had to learn three common Arabic terms: "wa" (and), "al" (the), "inna" (surely). One should not need to know more than 20 common Arabic terms to identify the words they wish to research further. If you dont want to memorise them, simply have them as a list by your computer. It couldn't be easier.

4) To make sure you have the right word, type the word (fuada) into a phonetic search engine, like the one below:

www.islamicity.com/ps/default.htm (uses Yusuf Ali's translation)

And look to see if the word "heart" turns up in the verses returned in the search. In this case, it has, so this tells us we are very likely to have the correct word. If the word doesn't turn up, repeat steps 3-4 carefully.

5) Now we have the word "fuada", we need to determine what is the root of "fuada". In other words, what are the Arabic letters that make up the word "fuada"? To do this say "fuada" out loud and try to work out the main sounds (i.e. syllables) of the word. A tip is to try and pronounce each vowel as well. So, in this case it would be: fu-a-da. The root of "fuada" happens to be: Faa-Alif-Dal (see Arabic letters above).
In a situation where you have two similar sounds/letters, just try both (e.g. Dal & Daad, Ha & H!aa, Siin & Saad, Taa & Tay, Th!aa & Thal, Zay & Za), in a process of elimination. "AA" in a transliteration usually means the Arabic letter Ayn, not Alif.

6) Once you have some root possibilities, click on the first letter of the root, see if its listed. Keep trying all the possibilities until you find it. If you cant find it, repeat the process again. If you still cant find it, feel free to ask on a Muslim or Islam forum. It does get easier with practice.

Alternatively, buy a word for word Quran, which separates each Arabic word giving the English meaning next to it. This allows you to see the component letters (i.e. root) of every word, without you having to do any work apart from knowing the Arabic alphabet (which is shown above anyway). Google: 'noble quran word for word' to find an appropriate store (~$60 US / £30 Sterling).

Please note 99% of roots have now been listed.