القاضي هنا.

In Modern Standard Arabic, the present-tense verb to be is usually not stated.

So instead of saying The judge is here with a separate word for is, Arabic simply says:

القاضي هنا

This is very normal Arabic. If you wanted a different tense, then Arabic would use a verb, for example:

• كان القاضي هنا = The judge was here
• سيكون القاضي هنا = The judge will be here

It is a nominal sentence.

In a basic Arabic nominal sentence, you often have:

• a topic/subject (مبتدأ)
• followed by a predicate/comment (خبر)

Here:

• القاضي = the مبتدأ
• هنا = the خبر

So the structure is basically:

[the judge] [here]

which corresponds to The judge is here in English.

الـ is the Arabic definite article, meaning the.

So:

• القاضي = the judge

Without الـ, the noun would be indefinite:

• قاضٍ = a judge

So:

• القاضي هنا = The judge is here
• قاضٍ هنا = A judge is here

A careful MSA pronunciation is:

al-qāḍī hunā

A few helpful points:

• ال here is pronounced al-
• ق is a moon letter, so the l in ال stays pronounced
• ض is a heavy/emphatic consonant
• the final ي in القاضي gives a long ī sound
• هنا is pronounced hunā, with a long ā at the end

So it is al-qāḍī hunā, not aq-qāḍī hunā.

No. In this word, the final ي is part of the noun itself.

So القاضي is just the normal word for the judge.

This is important because English speakers often notice the final -i sound and wonder whether it is a possessive ending. Here it is not. It is simply part of the word’s form.

Because هنا already means here as an adverb of place.

So Arabic says:

• القاضي هنا = The judge is here

You do not normally need a preposition like in or at before هنا.

In other words, هنا already does the job by itself.

It is nominative, because it is the مبتدأ of the sentence.

However, with this kind of noun, the case ending is not very obvious in ordinary writing, so you usually just see:

القاضي

without a clearly visible change at the end.

For a learner, the main practical point is:

• grammatically, it is nominative
• in normal unvowelled writing, it still looks like القاضي

It is a noun meaning judge, and more specifically it comes from an active participle pattern often used for professions or the person who does an action.

Its root is:

ق ض ي

This is a more advanced point, but it helps explain why the word has the shape قاضي.

For a beginner, the important takeaway is simply that القاضي is the standard MSA word for the judge.