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Can you help me with verbal nouns?

It´ll be more useful to use an Arabic - Arabic dictionary, and you can try this online dictionary
http://www.almaany.com

Always choose معجم عربي عربي to the far right before entering the word in the search box

Hello Rachel,
I am so surprise about your question, I would like to explain to you everything's done about making the nouns from the verbs, but it's too hard for you even for the Arabs. Therefore, I am going to guide you as well to understand the logical grammar, I meant الصرف والتحويل,but you have to check a dictionary to know if you're sure about your idea or not.
The Arabic language is as puzzle, we don't need to remember all the nouns to know the meaning, we only need to know the meaning of the verb and its structure to understand what meaning is.
Making the nouns isn't as in English, because when we talk about the noun in Arabic, we mean : the 'normal' noun[food, writing, book,..], the noun of "who, where or when, whom...
Look to these examples:
كَتَبَ كَاتِبٌ مَكْتُوبُ كِتَابٌ مَكْتَبَةٌ
write, who writes, which is written, the source of writing(books), the place where we will have every source of writing (books).
in English:
wrote, a writer, a written, a book, a library.
as you see we use the verb to make other nouns. In general we have:
اسم الفاعل | اسم المفعول | اسم الآلة | اسم الزمان والمكان | اسم التفضيل والمبالغة | اسم المصدر

In grammar, we don't need to remember or make for every word a rule in Arabic, sometimes we use something like an example for every similar word. Let me gives you an example :
كَتَبَ قَرَأَ جَهَرَ
لَعِبَ فَهِمَ تَعِبَ
مَسْمُوعٌ مَفْهُومٌ مَقْلُوبٌ
on these example, you notice the words use the same vowels mark, only the letters which are difference. [ Remember that vowels are important for understanding grammar]
kataba, qara2a, hajara === ktb, qr2, hjr ==== []a+[]a+[]a, in that case we use a simple way to remember every word with its structure, with : fa3ala فَعَلَ [named الوَزْنُ ]
and that means for the most of verbs with that wazn, they will have same rules in grammar. we only need to stay one of them, and then we can do the same for the others. That we do in Arabic.
It's hard to explain everything in one question. In addition, You have to learn them step by step. I add you some sources
http://www.drmosad.com/index126.htm
http://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/verbal-noun-verb-form-i/
http://www.arabictree.com/masdar-the-verbal-noun/
Regard

Hi
All learners of all languages should know this.
When you read you can only understand words that you have studied before.
and when you speak you use only words that you mastered !.
and that you cannot conjugate verbs as you speak !!
this does not work.
(It does not eat !! hahaha) as we express it in our Iraqi dialect.
However I think the answer for your question is here
http://qutrub.arabeyes.org/