Archive for April, 2009
Expressing Worry in Arabic Posted by aziza on Apr 30, 2009
The emergence of swine flu has caused a lot of concerns and worries for many people around the world, including me. I check the news websites every few hours to know if new cases have been discovered and I hope and pray that this situation is resolved before more suffering happens. I am worried and…
Swine flu -translation Posted by aziza on Apr 29, 2009
This posting is part 2 of my previous posting about swine flu. In the previous post, I cited a section from the BBC Arabic website about swine flu to give some useful vocabulary and timely expressions about this important topic. in this post, I present my translation of the information presented in the previous post…
Swine flu Posted by aziza on Apr 28, 2009
News media is nowadays dominated by swine flu (انفلونزا الخنازير). The World Health Organization (منظمة الصحة العالمية) has issued alerts and raised the level of alert in response to the increasing number of people contracting the disease and dying by it. It is tragic and worrying! In this posting, I present an excerpt from the…
Practicing Plural Agreement in Arabic Posted by aziza on Apr 24, 2009
In one of my older posts, I explained that number agreement is very important in Arabic, and when we write or speak about one person or object, it is different from writing or speaking about 2 (dual), or about 3 or more (plural). Number agreement affects all parts of the sentence; nouns, pronouns, verbs, etc…
“But where are the camels?!!!” Posted by aziza on Apr 21, 2009
The other day I was giving a presentation about the Arab world, and I showed my audiences some images of different Arab countries, but then one of them exclaimed, “But where are the camels!” She was really surprised to see how modern Arab cities are. I think that a lot of people in the West…
Alif and Hamza – part 2 Posted by aziza on Apr 18, 2009
In this posting, I continue to summarize some rules related to the use of alif and hamza in Arabic writing. If you missed Part 1, check it out here. At the beginning of a word, ‘hamzat alwaSl’ (همزة الوصل) can be found in relation to certain verb forms and their derivatives, e.g. verb form VIII…
Alif and Hamza Posted by aziza on Apr 15, 2009
Some grammarians regard alif (ا) and hamza (ء) as two distinct letters, while others regards them as two realizations of the same letter. They are a problematic aspect of Arabic writing and are often confusing to native and non-native speakers alike. In this posting, I hope to summarize some of the rules related to writing…