هو يستحق المساعدة.

• هو = he
• يستحق = deserves / is worthy of
• المساعدة = the help / help / assistance

So the sentence means He deserves help or He deserves the assistance, depending on context.

Yes. In Arabic, the verb يستحق already shows that the subject is he because it is third person masculine singular.

So هو is not strictly necessary. You can also say:

يستحق المساعدة

Adding هو can:

• make the subject clearer
• add emphasis
• create contrast, like He deserves help as opposed to someone else

So both are correct, but هو gives a little more focus to he.

Arabic allows more than one common word order.

• هو يستحق المساعدة = subject first
• يستحق المساعدة = verb first, with the subject understood
• هو first can sound more emphatic or more like everyday explanatory speech

In Modern Standard Arabic, verb-first structure is often considered more classically typical, but subject-first structure is also very common and perfectly correct.

يستحق comes from the verb استحقّ, which means to deserve or to be entitled to.

• Root: ح ق ق
• Verb form: Form X (استفعل pattern)

In this sentence, يستحق is:

• present/imperfect tense
• third person
• masculine
• singular

So it means he deserves.

المساعدة literally means the help or the assistance.

But in Arabic, a definite noun is often used where English would simply say help in a general sense. So يستحق المساعدة can very naturally mean He deserves help.

If you said مساعدة without ال, it would sound more indefinite, like some help or help of some kind, depending on context.

So in this sentence, المساعدة is very natural and idiomatic.

It is the direct object of the verb يستحق.

So:

• يستحق = deserves
• المساعدة = the thing he deserves

In fully vowelled Arabic, it would be:

هُوَ يَسْتَحِقُّ الْمُسَاعَدَةَ

The final ـةَ shows the accusative case, because it is the direct object.

In normal everyday writing, those case endings are usually not written, so you just see المساعدة.

Yes. م is a moon letter, so the ل in ال is pronounced.

So المساعدة is pronounced approximately:

al-musāʿada

And the whole sentence is approximately:

huwa yastaḥiqqu al-musāʿada

A couple of pronunciation notes:

• يستحق has a doubled final q sound because of the shadda: yastaḥiqqu
• ع in مساعدة is a consonant that has no exact English equivalent

Yes, المساعدة is a feminine noun.

But it does not control the verb here, because it is the object, not the subject.

The subject is هو = he, so the verb is masculine singular:

• هو يستحق

If the subject were feminine, then the verb would change:

• هي تستحق المساعدة = She deserves help

So the verb agrees with the subject, not with the object.

You would say:

هي تستحق المساعدة

Changes:

• هو becomes هي = she
• يستحق becomes تستحق = she deserves

Everything else stays the same.

The most direct meaning is He deserves help or He deserves the assistance.

In English, that often overlaps with He deserves to be helped, but the Arabic sentence literally says that he deserves the help/helping/assistance.

If you wanted to express He deserves for us to help him more explicitly, you could say something like:

إنه يستحق أن نساعده

That means He deserves for us to help him or He deserves to be helped more explicitly.