Archive for April, 2011
Verb Tense: (2) Present المضارع Posted by Fisal on Apr 23, 2011
We spoke earlier about the past tense of Arabic verbs and learnt that the root verb is always in the past tense. We also learnt the types of root verbs according to their minimum number of letters. Today, we are going to speak about the present tense and how to conjugate it from the…
More words in combination or not? Posted by aziza on Apr 22, 2011
I got an interesting question from Juan about the word (لمّا) which means ‘when’, and he asked whether it involves a combination of (ما) with another word, the answer is ‘possibly’! I do not know for sure because I do not know the etymology, i.e. origin of the word, but it is likely for a…
Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) Posted by Fisal on Apr 21, 2011
Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian Poet شاعر , diplomat دبلوماسي and publisher ناشر . He studied law القانون at Damascus University and worked as a diplomat in the Syrian embassies in Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Britain, China and Spain before he retired in 1966. His poetic style combines simplicity البساطة and beauty الجمال . He explored…
Verb Tense: (1) Past الماضي Posted by Fisal on Apr 20, 2011
A verb is a part of speech that refers to an action happening at a certain time. Tense is the word used when speaking about the time of an action (verb). The form of the verbs depends on which tense it is. A verb must agree with its subject in both number and gender. Arabic…
Arabic Prepositions in combination (Part 2) Posted by aziza on Apr 18, 2011
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؟…
Arabic Prepositions in Combination Posted by aziza on Apr 17, 2011
Have you ever come across these words before? عمّ، فيمَ، مِمَّ These are question words involving both a preposition and the question word. عمّ = عن + ما / ماذا = about what عمّ تتكلم؟ What are you talking about? فيمَ = في + ما / ماذا = in what فيمَ تفكر؟ What are you…
Verb Type نوع الفعل Posted by Fisal on Apr 16, 2011
Today we are going to discuss the types of root verbs according to their form and ability to change form. The focus will be on the FORM and not the USE of these verbs. Uses of these special verb categories will come later. There are two main categories of verbs: (1) The Declinable Verb الفعل…