Archive for January, 2009
Arabic calligraphy Posted by aziza on Jan 31, 2009
Arabic calligraphy (الخط العربي) is a very important aspect of Arabic art and culture that has enjoyed an important status in Arabic culture for centuries. Calligraphy is defined as beautiful or decorative handwriting, which is a feature of the majority of writing systems around the world. In Arabic and Islamic culture, calligraphy has enjoyed a…
Arabic sentence structure: nominal and verbal sentences Posted by aziza on Jan 29, 2009
Arabic has 2 types of sentences: nominal and verbal. Nominal sentences begin with a noun or a pronoun, while verbal sentences begin with a verb. Nominal sentences have 2 parts: a subject (مبتدأ) and a predicate (خبر). When the nominal sentence is about being, i.e. if the verb of the sentence is ‘to be’ in…
Colors and Nature in Arabic Posted by aziza on Jan 23, 2009
In Arabic, many words referring to colors are derived from things that are found in nature and that have the color as pertinent to them, e.g brown is derived from coffee beans, pink is derived from flower, golden is derived from gold, and so on. These words are formed by adding a (ي) at the…
Greeting in Arabic Posted by aziza on Jan 19, 2009
The most common greetings in the Arabic language areأهلاًandالسلام عليكم أهلاًmeans hello, welcome, hi and how do you do? السلام عليكمis used for both hello and goodbye. People at different countries use variations of these expressions, e.g. in the Gulf countries, “هلا” is used as a local variation of أهلاً. This table shows…
Glimpses of Egyptian culture in a song Posted by aziza on Jan 16, 2009
I have always loved the song ( عودوني ) by the famous star Amr Diab. The music is authentic and touching, and the clip is amazing. I have always thought that Amr Diab chooses his songs very well, but this has by far been the best for me! The clip shows some images of traditional Nubian…
Learning Arabic … which variety? Posted by aziza on Jan 15, 2009
The Arabic language has many varieties, and many of those who start Arabic wonder which variety of Arabic they should learn. There are two main classifications of varieties of Arabic, and there are many sub classifications as well: The main classifications are Classical Arabic (/ العربية الفصحى al-‘arabeya al-fuSha), i.e. the written and formal varieties and Colloquial…