Tense and Negative Affixes in Arabic Dialects and MSA Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on May 8, 2018
Two obvious differences between Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are the parsing marks and certain affixes. In MSA, the time of the action of the present verb is indicated through the parsing marks. In dialects, it is known through prefixes. Likewise, MSA sentences are negated using separate negative particles. In dialects, the original…
Listening Comprehension (Sabaʕ Gaar سابع جار) 4 Posted by Hanan Ben Nafa on May 2, 2018
Over the past three weeks, we have been looking at a short scene (see below, from 2.46 to 5.46) from a popular Egyptian TV show that is currently screened in the Arab world. Now that we have the transcript of the script in both Arabic and English, it is time to test your understanding of…
A Vital Arabic Particle with Multiple Meanings Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Apr 26, 2018
Arabic is full of words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. One example is the Arabic particle ان – alif and nun, with no ء hamzah or diacritics. Their addition and position make the word versatile. When the ن has fahHah with…
Listening Comprehension (Sabaʕ Gaar سابع جار) 3 Posted by Hanan Ben Nafa on Apr 25, 2018
Picking it up where we left last week, we’re still looking at the short scenario from the Egyptian TV show سابع جار (the seventh neighbour). In this week, I’m going to provide a translation of the same scenario we have been learning the last two weeks in Egyptian and Standard Arabic. We’re still looking…
What is Arabic Sentence Parsing? Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Apr 24, 2018
Arabic sentence parsing is called إِعْرَاب. It is a change in the way final letters of words, namely nouns and verbs, are assigned diacritical marks which are called parsing marks عَلَامَات الإِعْرَاب. They are فَتْحَة fatHah, ضَمَّة DHammah, كَسْرَة kasrah, and سُكُوْن sukuun. They have a grammatical value and cause a slight change in pronunciation…
Family Vocabulary Posted by aziza on Apr 20, 2018
In a comment on my last post, one of the readers asked for posts suitable for beginners, and in this post, I present a simple video which teaches reading words related to family relationships. The videos are from a YouTube site called (Learn with Zakaria). The transcription and translation of the video are provided below…
Arabic Subordinating Conjunctions Posted by Ibnulyemen اِبْنُ اليَمَن on Apr 19, 2018
A subordinating conjunction is a word that connects two simple and unequal clauses—simple as they only have one verb and unequal as one can stand alone (called main) while the other (called subordinate) needs to be linked to another to be fully meaningful. In Arabic, subordinating conjunctions can be single-word, two-word, or three-word. This post…