In my pervious post I presented some combinations of prepositions with question words, i.e.

ممَّ، فيمَ، عمَّ

At the end of the post, I presented a question about two other combinations.

علام، إلام

علام = على + ما / ماذا = on what

إلام = إلى + ما / ماذا = to what

علام تضحك؟

أضحك على النكات التي قالها صديقي.

What are you laughing at (literally on)?

I laugh at the jokes that my friend said.

إلام ترمي؟

أرمي إلى أنه يكذب علينا.

What are you mean (literally aim to)?

I mean that he is lying to us.

It should be noted that when the same prepositions (على and إلى) come in combination with pronoun suffixes, the final vowel changes differently, i.e. it becomes (ي), e.g. عليه / إليه, i.e.

• When the prepositions (على and إلى) come in combination with the question word (ما), they become (علام and إلام)
• When the prepositions (على and إلى) come in combination with pronoun suffixes, they become (عليه and إليه).

The repositions (مِن and عن) in combination with the question word (مَن) also look different, e.g.

عمّن = عن + مَن = about who

مِمّن = مِن + مَن = from who

عمّن تسأل؟

أسأل عن زميلنا عادل.

Who are you asking about?

I am asking about out colleague Adel.

مِمّن تسخر؟

أسخر من الطالب الكسلان.

Who are you making fun of?

I am making fun of the lazy student.