Why near 17 percent of Quranic words start with 'wa' (وَ)? Can we detach 'wa' from those words?

Question

I'm working on Quran (using Quran's database) and I've noticed that from like 17000 distinct words of Quran, around 3000 start with wa attached to the beginning of the word.

Examples:

وَیَتَفَکَّرُونَ
وَیَهْدِی
وَتَنَازَعْتُمْ
وَقَصْرٍ
وَکَانُوا
وَالْمُؤْتُونَ
وَالْجِبَالَ
وَانْشَقَّتِ
وَأَقْوَمَ
وَجَاهِدْهُمْ
وَجَعَلَ
وَتَظُنُّونَ
وَجَدْتُمُوهُمْ
وَوَعَدْتُکُمْ
وَاعْبُدُوهُ
وَأَجَلٌ
وَکَیْفَ
وَسَعَیٰ
وَنَهَرٍ
وَیُونُسَ

This means that based on what I've found online in Quran's scripture, near 17% of words have wa attached to them at the beginning.

This makes lingual analysis of Quran really really hard. Why is it so? Is it a simple typing mistake, or is it a known Arabic or Quranic rule? Is it safe if I remove them from those words?

Answer 1

The conjunction "وَ" basically means "and" (although this may change by context, e.g. "!والله" (By Allah!)). Unlike English, a conjunction in Arabic is written attached to the subsequent word when it is only one letter long.

So, yes, it can be detached. However, you'd still need to be able to distinguish between a word that starts with the conjunction "وَ" and a complete word that actually starts with "وَ".

Answer 2

In Arabic, 'wa' (وَ) means 'And', which should be considered as a different word.

In case of almost all of the the presented examples (without وَجَدْتُمُوهُمْ), 'wa' (وَ) should be considered as a different word.

Is it safe if I remove them from those words?

Not from all. As I say, in the presented examples, you can easily remove 'wa' from all of the word except وَجَدْتُمُوهُمْ. You should know the root of the word first to determine whether 'wa' could be removed or not.

Jajakallah.

Answer 3

From your list the only real non independent "wa/وَ" is in

وَجَدْتُمُوهُمْ

which is a plural form of the verb: وَجَدَ.
In all other posted cases "wa" is an equivalent to "and" and therefore should be considered as a different or independent word. I honestly don't know if there's really any rule saying one should "hang them" on the following word.

But how would you analyze the Quran linguistically if you don't even know which words can be separated and which not? You should first star by learning Arabic and try to know the roots of the words!

I mean if you take away those "wa" you would change the meaning in most cases dramatically, so that the sentences wouldn't make any sense. This would also have major impact on the grammatical rules -assuming there still will be some useful sentences left-.

IMO you should still elaborate your Question or try to explain how you would achieve what you want to do unfortunately I'm not able to follow your link as I'm behind a firewall!

As for why "wa" is so prevalent, one reason for that is the use of many "and's" in the Quran, also a lot of Arabic words start with "wa" as the verb already mentioned above an other frequent example in the Quran is

ويل

then it is used for oaths as described by goldenPseudo for example in:

وَالعَصْرِ (al-'asr)

or

وَالتِينِ وَالزَّيتُنِ وَطُورِ سِنِينَ وَهَذَا البَلَدِ الأمِينِ (at-tyn)

where 3 of the "wa's" are of this kind (the 2nd one in the order of the verse is an equivalent to "and")!

on the other hand as the letter "واو" in Arabic is one of the letters which appear especially at the beginning of a word like an independent letter. You may miss the fact that in Quran there are many words that start with a "فاء" / "fa ف" or "باء" / "ba ب" or other letters, which aren't a part of the "next" word like:

فَمَا at-tyn

or in surat a-Shams

فألهمها
فقال
فكذبوه
and in some riwaya:
فلا يخاف instead of ولا يخاف

note that about all the rest of the verses of this surah begin with an oath.

or in surat al-qadr

بإذْنِ رَبِّهِمْ

in surat al-'alaq

بِاسْمِ
بِالقَلَمِ
بِالتَّقْوَى
بِأنَّ
بِالنَّاصِيَةِ

just to give some examples from short surahs.

And Allah knows best!