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…
Expressing Likes and Dislikes in Arabic Posted by aziza on Feb 9, 2010
There are some expressions that we can use to express likes and dislikes in Arabic. أحب السباحة. “I like swimming.” لا أحب الشطرنج. “I don’t like chess.” أحب الرياضة جداً/كثيراً. “I like sports very much” لا أحب كرة القدم أبداً/إطلاقاً. “I don’t like football at all.” المفضّل/ المفضّلة “Favorite” هوايتي المفضّلة هي القراءة. “My favorite…
Arabic Irregular Verbs: Hollow Verbs (Part 2) Posted by aziza on Feb 6, 2010
This post deals with conjugation of verbs that have a medial vowel (ا). They are called hollow verbs(الفعل الأجوف), e.g. (نام) ‘slept’, (باع) ‘sold’, (قام) ‘got up’, etc. In the past tense, the medial vowel disappears with some pronouns, i.e. first and second person pronouns in addition to the third person feminine plural pronoun. The…
Arabic Irregular Verbs: Hollow Verbs (Part 1) Posted by aziza on Feb 3, 2010
This post deals with conjugation of verbs that have a medial vowel (ا). They are called hollow verbs(الفعل الأجوف), e.g. (نام) ‘slept’, (باع) ‘sold’, (قام) ‘got up’, etc. In the present tense, the medial vowel can change, as it becomes like its root. The three examples below give examples of three verbs that behave differently…
Irregular Verbs in Arabic (Part 4): Conjugating Verbs that Begin with a Vowel Posted by aziza on Jan 30, 2010
This post deals with conjugation of verbs that begin with the vowel (و) – (الفعل المثال الواوي), e.g. (وصل) ‘arrived, (وعد) ‘promised, etc. In the present tense, which usually involves the use of prefixes, the first vowel of the verb is substituted by the prefix, i.e. the vowel which occurs in the beginning of the…
Irregular Verbs in Arabic (Part 3): Verbs Beginning with Vowels Posted by aziza on Jan 27, 2010
This post deals with verbs that begin with a vowel (الفعل المثال), e.g. (وصل) ‘arrived, (وعد) ‘promised, (يئس) ‘gave up hope’, etc. In the past tense, they take the same endings like any other verb, this is mainly because past tense verbs are conjugated with suffixes, or endings. Therefore, the beginning of the verbs, i.e…