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The Gender of Arabic Nouns (1) Posted by on Jul 17, 2018

The gender الجِنْس of noun الاِسْم in Arabic is either masculine مُذَكَّر or feminine مُؤَّنَّث. The masculine المُذَكَّر is the basic form; therefore, it does not require a marker عَلاَمَة. The feminine المُؤَنَّث is derived from the masculine; it requires a feminine marker عَلَامَة تَأنِيْث. There are two types of masculine: real masculine and unreal…

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Assimilation in Arabic Posted by on Jul 12, 2018

In natural speech, it is always difficult to utter a sound twice in a row, as in عَلْلَم which becomes عَلَّم. It is also relatively difficult to produce two sounds from the same area of articulation consecutively, as in مِنْ رَأْسِكَ which is pronounced as مِرَّأْسِكَ. Therefore, we recourse to assimilation. In Arabic, assimilation الإِدْغَام…

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Saudi women can finally drive, where are they going? (2) Posted by on Jul 11, 2018

At the end of last month, women in Saudi Arabic have been given the permission الإذن to drive for the first time ever للمرة الأولى على الإطلاق. This royal decision was made in September last year but it has only come into force a few weeks ago. Different media outlets وسائل الإعلام المختلفة made sure…

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Broken Plural in Arabic Posted by on Jul 5, 2018

In a previous post, you learned that Arabic plural nouns are three forms: sound masculine plural جَمْعُ المُذَكَّرِ السَّالِم, sound feminine plural جَمْعُ المُؤَنَّثِ السَّالِم, and broken plural جَمْعُ التَّكْسِيْر. The first two are regular because their formation entail adding a suffix (i.e. ون and ات, respectively) to the end of the singular without a…

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Saudi women can finally drive, where are they going? (1) Posted by on Jul 4, 2018

More than a week ago, and on the 24th. June, women in Saudi Arabic have finally been allowed to drive سُمح للنساء في السعودية أخيرا بالقيادة. This event has attracted a wide media coverage تغطية إعلامية واسعة  and this included many personal statements by Saudi women. In this blog post, we’re going to study a…

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Deriving Nouns from Verbs in Arabic (1) Posted by on Jul 3, 2018

A distinguishing feature of Arabic language is that it is a derivational language. Multiple words are derived from a single root word based specific morphological rules. Using the morphological measure, affixes (suffixes, prefixes, and infixes) are appended to the root word forming news words. For example, form the root كَتَبَ ‘write’, we derive كَاتِب ‘writer’…

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Listening Answer, Saudi women driving Posted by on Jun 29, 2018

This post presents the answer of the listening comprehension exercise presented earlier on Saudi women who have been allowed to drive for the first time. English questions and answers: 1- What does ‘Hissa’ say about the first time she drives? Hissa says that it is a historic day and she is very excited to drive…

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