Archive for October, 2017
Genitive Construction in Arabic Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Oct 30, 2017
Genitive Construction (GC), known as iDHaafah إِضَافَة, is usually encountered at the early stages of learning Arabic. The main reason for this is that a genitive construction, which is a phrasal (i.e. more than one word) structure can be used as a faa‘il فَاعِل ‘subject’ or a maf‘uul مَفْعُول ‘object’ of the sentence in lieu…
‘Not your habibti’ Project مشروع أنا مش حبيبتك Posted by Hanan Ben Nafa on Oct 25, 2017
Today’s post is a comprehension task, based on a short text and audio clip, produced by the BBC Arabic (see video clip below). In this video, you will listen to the founder of the project and the Palestinian activist, Yasmeen Majli, talking about her project ‘Not your habibti’ and its aims. Earlier last week…
Names and Titles in Arabic Culture Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Oct 19, 2017
In the Arab World الوَطَن العَرَبِي or العَالَم العَرَبِي, choosing a name for a newborn is in the main influenced by religion, that is it is always Islamic and derived from Arabic language. Some name their babies after a famous or influential person, some after an elder family member, and others follow what is à…
Comprehension task: Grenfell Tower Fire Victims (1) Posted by Hanan Ben Nafa on Oct 18, 2017
Today post is a comprehension task, based on a short text and audio clip, produced by the BBC Arabic. Here is the link to the news article: http://www.bbc.com/arabic/40295645 The same text is also copied below. For this task, you need to read the text, which is made up of four sentences, in order to answer…
To my mother Posted by aziza on Oct 13, 2017
In my previous post, I wrote the story of the poem “To my Mother”, originally “A Poem of Apology” by Mahmoud Darwish, and in this post, I present the translation of the poem and the song with English subtitles. أحن إلى خبز أمي وقهوة أمي ولمسة أمي وتكبر في الطفولة يوماً على صدر يومِ وأعشق…
Indefinite Nouns and Definite Nouns in Arabic Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Oct 12, 2017
The Noun الاسم alism in Arabic, any noun that is derived from the verb, can be either Indefinite نَكِرَة nakirah or Definite مَعْرِفَة ma‘rifah. The Indefinite النَّكِرَة an-nakirah is almost always changeable to Definite following to two morphological rules. Not every Definite, however, is changeable to Indefinite. That is, there are certain nouns that exist…
The theme of nature in Fairuz’s songs (2) Posted by Hanan Ben Nafa on Oct 11, 2017
In this post, we’re looking at two songs by Fairuz , following the same theme of the previous post. Both are in Lebanese Arabic. – The first song is: شايف البحر Do you see the sea? شايف البحر شو كبير؟… كبر البحر بحبك Do you see how big the sea is, that big I…