Archive for February, 2010
Belly Dancing in Arab Culture Posted by aziza on Feb 28, 2010
Belly dancing (الرقص الشرقي) is an important aspect of Arab and Middle Eastern culture. It is controversial, and there are many views about it in the Arab world as well as in the West. Some regard it as an exploitation of the female body and therefore associate it with negative sexual stereotypes while others regard…
Arabic Cultural Expressions: From Assalamu ‘alaykum to Bismillah Posted by aziza on Feb 27, 2010
I am writing this post in response to a kind suggestion of Juan who asked me to write a post about cultural expressions and their replies. Thank you very much Juan for the suggestion! I think that this is a very important topic. Please find a list below. بسم الله “Bismillah” literally means (in the…
Arabic Weak Verbs in the Present Tense Posted by aziza on Feb 26, 2010
This post deals with conjugation of verbs that have a final vowel. They are called weak verbs(الفعل الناقص), e.g. (رَمَى) “threw” and (نما) “grew”, etc. In the present tense, the final vowel is returned to its origin. Consider the examples below. نما رَمَى أنمو أرمي أنا تنمو ترمي أنتَ تنمين ترمين أنتِ ينمو يرمي هو…
Arabic Irregular Verbs: Weak Verbs Posted by aziza on Feb 24, 2010
This post deals with conjugation of verbs that have a final vowel. They are called weak verbs(الفعل الناقص), e.g. (رَمَى) “threw” and (نما) “grew”, etc. In the past tense, the final vowel is returned to its origin, and it disappears with some pronouns, i.e. (هي), (هم) and (هما) feminine only for the last one. Consider…
One Arabic root … many derivatives (Part 2) Posted by aziza on Feb 18, 2010
In this post, I present one useful root in Arabic (ح م ل) and many words that derive from it. This is a very useful exercise to try for yourself to expand your vocabulary; you can also use the dictionary for help. حَمَلَ الولد الحقيبة. “The boy carried the bag.” Carried حَمَلَ هذا حِمْل ثقيل…
Vancouver 2010 Posted by aziza on Feb 16, 2010
Five days ago, the Winter Olympics (دورة الألعاب الأولمبية الشتوية) started in Vancouver, Canada. This event has attracted a great deal of attention worldwide, but not so much in the Arab world. There are only 3 Arab countries present in Vancouver Morocco (المغرب), Algeria (الجزائر) and Lebanon (لبنان). There are 5 athletes (خمسة رياضيين) from…
Avicenna Posted by aziza on Feb 12, 2010
Avicenna (ابن سینا) is a famous Muslim physician and philosopher. His full name is (أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن الحسن بن علي بن سينا). He was born around 980 in Afghanistan and started to learn medicine, logic, philosophy and literature at a very early age.He completed learning the Qur’an before the age of…