Let’s learn about some of the most important topics in Arabic Grammar.
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Here is a link to the Facebook post:
This is the link to the interactive version of the sheet, where you can listen to the audio:
Let’s learn about some of the most important topics in Arabic Grammar.
➕ more |
Here is a link to the Facebook post:
This is the link to the interactive version of the sheet, where you can listen to the audio:
Learning noun phrases in Arabic (or in any language) is a crucial part of building a sentence. A noun is a word that refers to an object, person, or concept. Therefore, a noun phrase is a structure that is based on a noun. In this lesson, we will learn how to build and use noun phrases in Arabic, together with 5 grammar topics that we will go through in the next 10 minutes. You can listen to all examples marked with an audio icon on the interactive lesson.
Suppose that you have the noun “book”, there are different ways of using a noun phrase with it. For example, you can say “a book”, “the book”, or “this book”. Also, you can combine it with an adjective, such as “a new book” or “the old book”. In terms of possession, you can use a possessive pronoun such as “my book/his book”. In addition, it can be part of a genitive expression, such as “The teacher’s book”, “the law book”, or “the book of grammar”.
What is common among all these structures? They can all be used in similar contexts and in similar grammatical roles. For example, you can say “I saw a book” or “I saw this new book” as an object of the sentence. Also, you can use it as the subject of a sentence “The new book fell on the floor” or “the teacher’s book fell on the floor”.
The bottom line is that: noun phrases in Arabic are essential parts of the sentence. However, understanding and using them usually spans different grammar topics. Such topics include: definite and indefinite nouns, adjectives, demonstratives, possessives and genitive expressions. Luckily, we cover all of these topics in our course “Basic Arabic Grammar” on Udemy.
For now, let’s start practicing how to build simple noun phrases in Arabic. Here are the examples for the five types of structures, corresponding to different grammar topics.
Notice that there are five types of noun phrases we are using here. The first is single noun, whether indefinite or definite (preceded by al- ال). Then we have noun phrases combining nouns and adjectives. In this case, it is important to also notice that if the noun is definite (i.e. has al- prefix), the adjective has to have al- prefix as well. Then, we have noun phrases with demonstratives (e.g. this), and in this case the noun has to be definite, and consequently the adjective, if any.
The next type is noun phrases with possessive pronouns (e.g. my/his), where the word itself has to be indefinite (without al- prefix), but grammatically it becomes definite by adding the possessive pronoun/suffix. The last type is for genitive expressions, indicating that something belongs to something or someone. In this case, the noun for the thing that belongs is indefinite, while the other noun is definite.
Study these examples well. Do you see the patterns? Also, open the link to the interactive lesson and listen to the audio for each example. Try to repeat what you hear. This way, you will start to develop your listening and speaking skills. To further enhance your grammar skills, you will need to practice. In the following image, you will see empty templates, where we removed the noun “book” and its equivalent from the examples. Now it is your turn to try new words. Use the words indicated above, as much as you can, to build new noun phrases.
As you may know, nouns in Arabic have gender: either male or female. In the examples above, noun phrases were based on the noun “book”, and other nouns of male gender in the exercises. Does it make a difference if we use a word of feminine gender? Yes it does. First, for a feminine word, the adjective has to be also feminine. In many cases, we do this by adding taa2 marbootah (this letter: ة ـة , a letter that sounds as “h” at the end of the word).
Now you get the idea. The only prominent difference involves words ending with taa2 marbooTah. If such words have a possessive suffix, this taa2 marbooTah becomes a normal taa2, in both writing and pronunciation. However, in case of genitive, where the word for the thing that belongs is followed by a word for what it belongs to; and in this case, the taa2 marbooTah is still written, but its pronunciation becomes a regular taa2.
Now also do your practice by filling the templates with other feminine words.
It is important to know that Arabic grammar is highly complex. There are different complexities when learning Modern Standard Arabic and when learning dialects, so it is important to learn the differences. There are so many topics which are interrelated and can be tackled on different levels of sophistication. That’s why the focus of our lessons is to go as simple as possible. You don’t need to study dozens of other topics just to learn the topic at hand. Just understand it well, practice it as much as you can, and then it will give you a useful piece of the puzzle, and a useful tool to help you navigate the complexity of the language. Good luck and keep learning! Please leave any questions you have in the comments or on our social media.
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A few days ago the last episode of Marvel’s Moon Knight series was released. The story and acting were quite good, but there was an aspect that many people liked. It is basically how Egypt, and its civilization and culture were portrayed. One significant aspect of Egyptian culture was the choice of the songs used in the intro and ending of each episode, as well as those that served as background music. As language learners, we may be curious about what these songs actually say, so in this post, we will cover a number of these songs, with their lyrics and explanation.
This song appeared in the first episode while the main character was waiting for his romantic date. The song itself is quite romantic, but its words portrays some interesting picture, which apparently have some significance in a later episode (No spoilers here 🙂 ). The singer of this song is Nagat (or Nagat al-Sagheerah, the little Nagat, apparently to distinguish her from another singer called Nagat).
These are the lyrics of the song.
I Dream with you | ba7lam ma3aak | بحلم معاك |
I dream with you .. of a ship | ba7lam ma3aak … be-safeenah | باحلم معاك.. بسفينة |
and a harbour .. to anchor us | we be-meenaa .. terasseenaa | وبمينا….ترسينا |
and sail again | we-neba77ar taanee | ونبحّر تاني |
the wind resists ..and i found you | el-ree7 te3aaned … we-ala2eek | الريح تعاند … وألاقيك |
in your eyes .. and your hands | fee 3enaik .. we-eedaik | في عينيك …..وإيديك |
my shore and my safety | shhaTTee we amaanee | شطي وأماني |
the whole world | el-3aalam kolloh | العالم كله |
with its secrets | be-asraaroh | بأسراره |
living with me | 3aayesh wayyaayaa | عايش ويايا |
living inside me | 3aayesh gowwaayaa | عايش جوايا |
as long as you’re .. in the journey with me | Tool ma-enta … fee el-re7lah ma3aayaa | طول ما انت ..في الرحلة معايا |
my name and your name .. my darling | esmak we esmee … ya 7abeebee | اسمك واسمي…. يا حبيبي |
my town .. and my story | madentee … we-7ekaaytee | مدينتي…… وحكايتي |
my home and my roving | sakanee we-ter7aalee | سكني وترحالي |
the whole world | el-3aalam kolloh | العالم كله |
with its secrets16 | be-asraaroh | بأسراره |
living with me | 3aayesh wayyaayaa | عايش ويايا |
living inside me | 3aayesh gowwaayaa | عايش جوايا |
as long as you’re .. in the journey with me | Tool ma-enta … fee el-re7lah ma3aayaa | طول ما انت ..في الرحلة معايا |
Lyrics are adapted from Lyrics translate website
This song appeared in the outro of the second episode. It belongs to a genre of music in Egypt called mahraganaat (literally means “carnivals”). This kind of music was at first mainly the music of more certain areas of cairo (manaatiq sha’beyyah = literally means popular areas but refer to more crowded and poorer areas). However, this music spread in popularity everywhere. It is similar to rap music in terms of some focus on “dissing” (or expressing disrespect) to other unnamed rivals. Of course there are also carnivals about romantic love and others about contemplating life and human nature. However, this song “el-melook” belongs to the first category, with a message of “we are better than you”.
Here are the lyrics of the song
The Kings | الملوك | |
[Singer: 3enaba] | [عنبة] | |
I can see non of you | anaa mesh shaayef feekom 7add | أنا مش شايف فيكم حد |
y’all bunch of boys, wheedling for a living | entoo 3eyaal 3aayshah 3alaa el-7akk | إنتوا عيال عايشين ع الحك |
Everyone knows that y’all are miniscule | koll el-naas 3arfaakoo 3al-2ad | كل الناس عارفاكوا ع القد |
Everyone knows that i’m fierce | koll el-naas 3aarfah enne ghasheem | كل الناس عارفة إني غشيم |
Never needed backup | 3omree fee yoam maa e7tagt le-7add | عمري في يوم ما أحتجت لحد |
Not bragging, swear to god it’s true. | mesh tafkheem wallaahee begadd | مش تفخيم و الله بجد |
Like a lion, standing in front of everyone | waa2ef west el-koll asad | واقف وسط الكل أسد |
Wasn’t meant1 to be mean | maa etrabbet-sh ennee ab2aa la2eem | ما أتربتيش إنى أبقى لئيم |
When it’s serious, i got the missiles (name of a band) | fee el-tanfeez 3andee el-Sawaareekh | في التنفيذ عندى الصواريخ |
I am 3enab from mars, dude | anaa 3ennaab yasta el-marreekh | أنا عناب ياسطى المريخ |
In my wars i use RPGs | west 7oroobee baDrab bawaazeek | وسط حروبي بضرب بوازيك |
In my county, i make history | west belaadee bakteblee tareekh | وسط بلادي بكتبلي تاريخ |
[Singer: Young Zuksh] | [يانج زوكش] | |
Dude, | 7abeebee | حبيبى |
Papa, | baabaa | بابا |
Here comes the gang | 7aDarnaa gainaa 3eSaabah | حضرنا جينا عصابة |
We live… | 3eshnaa | عيشنا |
Modestly | basaaTah | بساطة |
You’ll make it, if determined | hatenga7 law feeh eraadah | هتنجح لو فى إراده |
Never needed support, i am on my own (Alone) | ma7tagtesh 7add, anaa saaned nafsee alone | Alone ما احتاجتش حد أنا ساند نفسى |
Ringing and buzzing daily, is my phone. | arqaam betrenn be-tezenn 3ala el-telephone | أرقام بترن بتزن على التليفون |
Now that i made it, they love me, took my side! | 7abboonee lammaa weSelt etlawwenoo 100 loan | حبونى لما وصلت اتلونوا 100 لون |
Your shot hits the post, mine scores a goal | kortak teegee 3aarDah kortee teegee goan | كورتك تيجى عارضه كورتى بتيجى جوون |
[Singer: Ahmed Saad] | [أحمد سعد] | |
hush hush hush hush. | sokoot sokoot sokoot sokoot | سكوت سكوت سكوت سكوت |
The kings, kings, kings, kings are here | gatt el-molok molook molook | جت الملوك ملوك ملوك ملوك |
There is no escape, escape escape | mafeesh horoob horoob horoob | مفيش هروب هروب هروب |
from the lions, the lions | men el-osood men el-osood | من الأسود من الأسود |
No sales talk! | e7naa mesh be-nebee3 kalaam | إحنا مش بنبيع كلام |
We get to the point! | e7naa naas doghree we-tamaam | إحنا ناس دوغرى و تمام |
(We) do not care who says what | mesh shaaghelnaa meen ellee 2aal | مش شاغلنا مين اللى قال |
The envious have no place | el-7aqood malhoosh makaan | الحقود مالهوش مكان |
[Singer: Young Zuksh] | [يانج زوكش] | |
Mess with me, you get a taste of lunacy | tenkosh-nee teshoof genaan | تنكشنى تشوف جنان |
People would gather2 | we-tetlam el-geraan | وتتلم الجيران |
God blessed me with a wise tongue | rabbak eddaanee 7ekmah fee el-lesaan | ربك إدانى حكمة فى اللسان |
(with which) I’d win battles | akol-kom bel-kalaam | أكلكم بالكلام |
Yang Zuksh is from El-Salam | yough zoksh gaay men el-salaam | يانج زوكش جاي من السلام |
Do not trust me | akhook malhoosh amaan | أخوك مالهوش أمان |
I’m decent, so don’t yell “man” at me | anaa 3ala el-mazboot tamaam fa mat2olleesh yaa man | أنا على المظبوط تمام فمتقوليش يا مان |
hitting the gas, wining all trophies, bottled poison, quenched their thirst! | anaa daayes we faayez kesebt kol el-gawaayez .. 7aTTait el-semm fee azaayez .. sherebt koll ellee 3aayez | انا دايس و فايز كسبت كل الجوايز حطيط السم فى ازايز شربت كل اللى عايز |
I want you to understand me, distinguish! (as i’m doing), and know what’s right! | anaa 3aayez zayy maa-anaa 3aayez amayyez 3aayzak tefham-nee we-temayyez we-teshoof el-Sa77 we-dah kowayyes | انا عايز زى مانا عايز أميز عايزك تفهمنى و تميز و تشوف الصح ده كويس |
[Singer: Ahmed Saad] | [أحمد سعد] | |
Look, look, look where have we been | shoof shoof shoof konnaa fain | شوف شوف شوف كنا فين |
And where are we now | we-ba2ainaa delwa2tee fain | و بقينا دلوقتى فين |
You, who forgot about me in your good few days, i will forget you for years | yaa ellee neseetoo-nee fee yomain-kom anaa hansaa-kom seneen | ياللى نسيتونى فى يومينكم انا هنساكم سنين |
Thanks for hardships, that opened my eyes, | kattar khair el-Zoroof ellee tekhalleenee ashoof | كتر خير الظروف اللى تخلينى أشوف |
some i did truly love, others do not deserve consideration | naas 7abbait-haa be-amaanah we-naas taanyah maa-yetshaafoo-sh | ناس حبيتها بأمانه وناس تانيه مايتشافوش |
[Singer: 3enaba] | [عنبة] | |
Everyone was blown away when i’m present | lammaa gait el-koll Taar | لما جيت الكل طار |
Undeliberate, i’m an explosion | ghaSb 3annee anaa enfegaar | غصب عنى انا انفجار |
It’s hard to see you in space | Sa3b ashoofak fee el-faDaa2 | صعب اشوفك فى الفضاء |
If you came to me, we’ll make a mess | law gait a3mel ma3aak 7ewaar | لو جيت اعمل معاك حوار |
Stay away, i vigorous, from Cairo, yet stronger than any foreigner | eb3ed 3annee 3ashaan anaa ghabee, qaaheraawee we-agmad men el-agnabee | ابعد عنى علشان انا غبى قاهراوى و اجمد من الاجنبى |
Dude, your planet is different from mine | kawkabkoo yasTaa ghair kawkabee | كوكبكوا ياسطى غير كوكبي |
Alone, can drive an army of Tatars | beToolee wa7dee asoo2 tataar | بطولى وحدي اسوق تاتار |
[Singer: Young Zuksh] | [يانج زوكش] | |
I’m cool, i’m cool, i’m chic | anaa gaamed anaa gaamed anaa sheek | انا جامد انا جامد انا شيك |
If you have money, a car gets anywhere | law ma3aak feloos 3arabeyyah be-temashsheek | لو معاك فلوس عربيه بتمشيك |
Bro, befriend no hobos, it’s a given | ma3roof ya zemeelee ma-teSaa7eb-sh halaafeet | معروف يازميلى متصحبش هلافيت |
(Are you) Cultured? Welcome aboard | law betefham fee el-oSool ahlan beek | لو بتفهم فى الاصول اهلا بيك |
We’d want you | neshtereek | نشتريك |
You’ll be on top | teb2aa foa2 | تبقى فوق |
Gray-haired?, meh, it’s just a colour. | we-law yesheeb el-sha3r loan | و لو يشيب الشعر لون |
Till the end we’ll keep up | mekammeleen le-aakher yoam | مكملين لآخر يوم |
Success is hard, requires no sleep | aSl el-nagaa7 dah sa3b mesh me7taag el-noam | أصل النجاح ده صعب مش محتاج النوم |
This song appeared at the end of episode 5. A very melancholic song by the amazing Lebanese singer and actress Sabah. The song portrays a complex psychological state, about a person oscillating between feelings of unexplained happiness and sadness.
Here are the lyrics of the song.
Sometimes. ..Sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات…ساعات |
Sometimes. sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات…ساعات |
I love my life & adore the things ( issues) . | a7ebb 3omree, we a3sha2 el-7agaat | أحب عمري و أعشق الحاجات |
I love all people | a7ebb koll el-naas | أحب كل الناس |
and how much of feeling (I have) | we-add eih e7saas | و أد ايه احساس! |
and I feel inside me hundred melodies | we-a7ess gowwaayaa be-meet nagham | و احس جوايا بميت نغم |
hudred melodies filling up the silence | meet nagham yemloo el-sokaat | ميت نغم يملوا السكات |
Sometimes. ..Sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات .. ساعات |
Sometimes. ..Sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات …ساعات |
I feel how much I am lonely ! | a7ess add eih wa7eedah | أحس أد ايه وحيدة |
the words that are in my mouth are not new !, | we-add eih el-kelmah fee lesaanee ma-hesh gedeedah | و أد ايه الكلمة في لساني مهيش جديدة |
and how much I am not happy! , | we-add eih maa-anee-sh sa3eedah | و أد ايه منيش سعيدة |
and that the stars are so far !, | we-enn el-negoom be3eedah | و ان النجوم بعيدة |
And how heavy the time step is ! | we-te2eelah khaTwet el-zaman | و ثقيلة خطوة الزمن |
How heavy theticking of the clocks! | te2eelah da22et el-sa3aat | ثقيلة دقة الساعات |
Sometimes. Sometimes | sa3aat sa3aat | ساعات…ساعات |
refrain | ||
I laugh & play like a spring bird | aD7ak we-al3ab zayy 3aSfooret rabee3 | أضحك و ألعب زي عصفورة ربيع |
Like the breeze ..as it comes.. then it suddenly vanishes | zayy el-naseem maa ye3addee we-fee la7zah yeDee3 | زي النسيم ما يعدي و في لحظة يضيع |
I get very happy ..and laugh so very much | afra7 awee … we-aD7ak awee awee | أفرح قوي ..و أضحك قوي قوي |
and love my life and adore the passing day . | we-a7ebb 3omree we a3sha2 el-yoam ellee faat | و أحب عمري و اعشق اليوم اللي فات |
Sometimes. Sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات …ساعات |
it’s strange, it is strange | ghareebah, we-ghareebah | غريبة ..و غريبة |
the same thing that makes me happy, doesn’t make me happy | nafs elle beyfarra7-nee maa yefarra7-nee | نفس اللي بيفرحني ما يفرحني |
and it’s strange | we-ghareebah | و غريبة |
the same thing that comforts me doesn’t comfort me | nafs elle yerayya7-nee maa yerayya7-nee | نفس اللي يريحني ما يريحني |
and I feel my lifetime is gone by | we-a7ess enn 3omree faat | و احس ان عمري فات |
without me loving me life and adoring things | men ghair ma-a7ebb 3omree we-a3sha2 el-7agaat | من غير ما احب عمري و اعشق الحاجات |
like this sometimes | kedah saa3aat | كدة ساعات |
and like that sometimes | we-kedah saa3aat | و كدة ساعات |
and it’s strange, the ticking of time passing | we-ghareebah, ghareebah da22et el-zaman | و غريبة..غريبة دقة الزمن |
and it’s strange, strange how the clock game is | we-ghareebah ghareebah … le3bet el-saa3aat | و غريبة غريبة ..لعبة الساعات |
Sometimes. Sometimes | saa3aat saa3aat | ساعات…ساعات |
And here is a list of all songs (Egyptian and non-Egyptian) used in the series.
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When learning Arabic, it is important to have a clear understanding of your goals. Otherwise, you may spend a lot of time, money and effort without a satisfactory outcome. The first thing to know is that there are two different types of Arabic. The first is Formal language (known as fuSHaa, meaning the most eloquent). FuSHaa includes both classical Arabic and the more popular Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)d. MSA is used mainly in written and formal materials. On the other hand, the informal/colloquial language is mainly spoken, with different dialects and varieties across different countries. In this post, you’ll see the different possible goals associated with each type. Then, you will know which type of Arabic to focus on, so that you can achieve your goals.
Suppose that you need to learn Arabic to read some official documents or read a book in Arabic. In this case, it makes sense only to learn MSA. Otherwise, if you want to:
then in most cases you will need to study one dialect or another.
An ideal learning strategy would be to combine both types. In fact, this is what most Arabic native speakers do. They just switch between the two types according to context.
In order to understand Arabic better, it i important to make a few distinctions, and to see some overlaps.
The first distinction is between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. Although Arabic speakers call both of them al-fuSHaa (or the most eloquent), classical Arabic refers mainly to Arabic used in literary and religious texts many centuries ago, while Modern Standard Arabic is the Arabic that is used nowadays for most of formal contexts. Here are a few points from this figure:
1- There is a lot of overlap between MSA and classical Arabic. The grammar is basically identical
2- many words in ancient texts (classical Arabic) that are not used nowadays (MSA)
3- many modern words that were coined to reflect many areas of technology, economics, business and so on
4- Some words had a certain meaning in classical Arabic and a different meaning in MSA. For example the word “sayyaarah” was used in Quran to mean “a caravan”, but in modern use, it means “a car/au automobile”
And there are a few important points about the distinction between fuSHaa and dialects:
1- There are different dialects for the different Arabic speaking countries
2- Some dialects can be grouped together, like Levantine, Maghreb, and Gulf groups since these dialects are similar to each other
3- Each dialect has an overlap with fuSHaa, many words and verbs either are the same as in MSA, or has an origin from classical Arabic
4- Each dialect has overlaps with other dialects, dialects with closer geographical proximity have greater overlap
5- Dialects are also influenced by other local languages, such as Egyptian Arabic being influenced by Coptic, and Maghreb dialects by Tamzight
6- Dialects are also influenced by foreign languages, such as French, English, Turkish … etc
Reading can be considered just one of the skills to learn a language. In fact, it is a very important skill if you are learning the language for any formal purpose: to read documents, read the news, or any content on the web. Learning to read in Arabic is no exception. However, there are some added challenges involved: mainly reading the script. This can be intimidating for some learners, as we can see in this picture.
In reality though, learning the script can be accomplished in a very short time. However, is knowing the script enough to be able to “read” Arabic? Of course not: the writing of Albanian also uses almost the same script as English, but can the speakers of English “read” Albanian?
This is where it is important to break down the “reading” into a number of elements, or “skills”. These skills would cover the whole process of “seeing” something written in the language, up to “understanding” what is written. In psychology, these processes are referred to as “cognitive processes”, which involve processing information from different senses and from memory in parallel. Let’s lay out these skills one by one:
You may have seen charts like these, mainly used for teaching children a list of alphabet letters.
You may have found songs or rhymes for singing the names of Alphabet letters.
How useful are these? Of course, this is an important step that even native speakers go through in order to learn their native written language. However, this is not enough, at least in Arabic. This is because there is one particular feature in the Arabic alphabet: letters take different shapes depending on where they are in the sentence. Therefore, a more sound approach is to learn the shapes of each letter, so that you can recognize it when you see it. Knowing the names of letters, then, would be useful because you will be able to point any letter you recognize with any shape to the name of the letter.
One peculiar aspect of Arabic writing is that short vowels are not letters. They are actually “diacritics”. These diacritics can be referred to as “harakaat” or “tashkeel”. It is important to point out that diacritics also include elements other than short vowels, such as “shaddah”, which doubles the sound of a letter. These are relatively few, and wouldn’t take long to learn, but it’s important to know how they sound when combined with letters.
Knowing letters and diacritics is important, and by using them you can go letter by letter in a word: identify the letter sound and the applied diacritics, and there you go: you can sound out a whole word in Arabic! Isn’t that great?
It is great; however, there is bad news here. In most Arabic writing, diacritics are almost non-existent. This can be challenging, even sometimes to native Arabic speakers. Here is where we start to apply what we have learned on actual words. When you are learning a new word, you need to pay special attention to how it is written. Try to associate the letters with the sound of the word. And by all means, when you’re learning a new word, make sure to have a resource that allows you to listen to how it is pronounced by an actual native speaker. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to know the correct pronunciation. When you learn many new words with their correct pronunciation, you will be able to formulate patterns for sounding out any word you read.
Moving to actual sentences, you will find that a large number of words (in any language) consist mainly of what is known as “function words”. What are function words? Just have a look at the first sentence in this paragraph and see the words in bold. These words can be articles, pronouns, prepositions, question words, and similar words. In linguistics, these words are referred to as “function words”, because they are mainly there for a grammatical function. In Arabic, there are many such words: such as articles, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, relative pronouns, demonstratives … etc. Some of these are not actually words, but rather prefixes or suffixes. Knowing these words helps you in two ways. First, you are able to recognize many of the words within the sentence. Second, you are able to understand the structure of the sentence.
All human languages have different word types: such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and more. It is absolutely important to know what is the word type of each word in the sentence you’re reading. One helpful aspect in this regard is knowing the function words. For example, if you know that the function word “in” is a preposition, it is unlikely that the word coming after is a verb.
Of course sentences can be very complex, but function words can give a broad structure of the sentence. Knowing the word types helps complement this structure. For example, saying “the girl is beautiful”, is different from “the beautiful girl”. So knowing which word is a noun, and which is an adjective can allow us to know both the content of the word and what it roughly means (even if we don’t know the exact noun or adjective), and also the structure of the sentence and understanding what is being written.
In early childhood education in elementary schools, teachers sometimes teach children “sight word”. These are words that appear frequently and are useful in reading. These words can include function words that we talked about, and they can also include words related to a particular domain, such as the words used in story books. This is quite important here, because any language consists of tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of words. It is unreasonable to expect to know, especially for a non-native speaker, the majority of these words. What should we expect instead?
One thing to expect is to attain knowledge of words related to a particular subject, task or field: such as the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs used in the context of math, literature, art, news or so forth. Can we know all words for all the fields? Perhaps, but perhaps it is better to focus on the vocabulary of mainly the field you are interested in.
The other thing to expect is a very interesting statistical law. The name of this law is Zipf’s law, which indicates, in plain terms, that if you sort all the words in a language by their frequency, the first few words would take up a very large percentage of all the words in any given text. For example, the first word can occur 20% of the time in any text (think of the word “the” in English for example), then the one after will be perhaps 12%, and so forth.
This way, you will find that the first 100 words in the language can occur like 50% of the time in any given context. Of course, many of these words are function words. Still, if we move to content words, we will find that the higher frequency words account for a large portion of any text. For example, you will encounter the noun “question” or the verb “ask” much more frequently than you will encounter words such as “Accismus” or “aggrandize”.
What’s the main take of this? Focus on a particular field, start with the most frequent words in it.
Finally, one of the very important skills for reading Arabic is to understand its morphology (the science of word building). Arabic words form according to “templates”. Templates consist of two things:
For example, the word “maktab”, which means office, has the root of KTB (the sound of “k”, “t”, and “b”). The wazn would show how to add additional letters to the word. In this case, it would be maktab, with the addition of the letter “m”, and the vowels “a”. This is an advanced topic, but it is important to learn it at some point. It will make many things make sense, including topics such as making plurals, and conjugations for certain verbs, and so forth.
At Champolu, we provide many learning solutions to boost your skills for reading Arabic using Champolu Method. You can start to use the free app ALIF-laam to practice your alphabet, diacritics, and sounding out skills.
It might be helpful if you want to take the Udemy course “Basic Arabic Reading” to give you a clear explanation of these topics.
In addition, you may want to start with learning the basics of Arabic grammar and function words. As you have seen in the article, function words can be very important for understanding what is written. You can take the course “Basic Arabic Grammar” to start learning.
Also make sure to subscribe to Champolu social media, where you will constantly find new materials to learn more vocabulary and grammar.
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This animal alphabet printable guide is a free resource for learning Arabic. In this guide, you will learn the following:
In addition, this guide has printable Arabic sheets with tracing. It helps learners trace the words to practice writing.
More Arabic alphabet printable PDF guides are coming soon!
There are many resources for learning to read in Arabic by Champolu. In addition, you can also enroll in our Basic Arabic reading course, which explains the alphabet and diacritics guide in more detail.
Learning to read in Arabic can be challenging. In this article, we will talk about the challenges. In addition, check our simple guides for learning how to read in Arabic.
If you type in Google “Why is Arabic …”, the autocomplete will suggest these searches which people do.
Indeed Arabic is important and beautiful but it can also be hard to learn. Let’s explore this further.
One of the reasons for the difficulty of Arabic is that the writing is “backwards”; i.e. its direction is from right to left. Therefore, if you want to learn Arabic, you will need to be able to read from right to left.
There are other challenges surrounding reading Arabic script, which are explained in the video here.
In a nutshell, the challenges for reading Arabic are:
An important consideration when learning Arabic is that not all Arabic letters have an equivalent English sound. That’s why there can be different ways to for writing Arabic in English/Latin letters, which is sometimes referred to as romanization. Apart from the more Academic ways of writing Arabic, a popular way is known as Franco-Arab, which is how the Arabic speaking internet generation started to write Arabic on computers and the internet in the early days before support to Arabic language was available. In this way of writing, the letters of Arabic with no English equivalent as written as numbers that resemble the shape of the Arabic letter. In Arabic, there are three letters mainly that are written as numbers:
There are other letters, but these are the most popular ones. You will notice that we have combined challenges here, to know the letters, and to be able to recognize and produce their sound.
Therefore, in this lesson we are providing an intuitive way to learn the alphabet letters, with their names, shapes, sounds, along with examples of each.
There are many resources for learning Arabic reading by Champolu. You can also enroll in our Udemy Basic Arabic reading course, which explains the guide in more detail.
In this guide for Arabic alphabet and diacritics reading, you will learn about the following:
There are many resources for learning Arabic reading by Champolu. In addition, you can also enroll in our Udemy Basic Arabic reading course, which explains the alphabet and diacritics guide in more detail.
Let’s learn about question words in Arabic. In this lesson, we will discuss interrogative sentences in Arabic. Mainly, we will introduce the main question words and the corresponding structure.
In this video, let’s learn about question words in Arabic.
مَن؟
man?
Who?
مَا؟
maa?
What?
مَاذَا؟
maadhaa?
What?
أيْنَ؟
ayna?
Where?
مَتَى؟
mataa?
When?
كَيْفَ؟
kayfa?
How?
كَم؟
kam?
How many?
لِمَاذَا؟
limaadhaa?
Why?
هَل؟
hal?
…? Yes/No
The word “hal” is a word we use for forming Yes/No questions in MSA.
In classical Arabic, sometimes the letter alif is used before the verb in a similar way:
Did you want to eat?
a-tureed an ta’akol?
أتريد أن تأكل؟
هَلْ؟
hal?
For asking Yes/No Questions
هَل نِمْتَ جَيِّداً؟
hal nimta jayyidan?
Did you sleep well?
هَل أنْت مِصْرِيّ؟
hal anta misreyy?
Are you Egyptian?
هَل تُرِيد أَنْ تَأكُل؟
hal tureed an ta’kol?
Do you want to eat?
هَل وَصَلَ الضُّيُوف؟
hal wasala ad-duyoof?
Did the guests arrive?
نَعَم
na’am
yes
لا
laa
no
أيْنَ الحَقِيبَة؟
ayna al-haqeebah?
Where is the bag?
أيْنَ المُدِير؟
ayna al-mudeer?
Where is the manager?
أيْنَ تَسْكُن؟
ayna taskun?
Where do you live?
أيْنَ أَنْت؟
ayna ant?
Where are you?
مَن هُوَ؟
man huwa?
Who is he?
مَن قَالَ لَكَ هَذَا؟
man qaala laka haadhaa?
Who told you so?
مَن هُوَ مُؤَلِّف الكِتَاب؟
man huwa mu’allif al-kitaab?
Who is the author of the book?
مَن هُوَ مُخْتَرِع الهَاتِف؟
man huwa mukhtare’ al-haatif?
Who is the inventor of the phone?
مَتَى وَصَلْتُم؟
mataa wasaltum?
When did you (pl-m) arrive?
مَتَى حَدَث هَذَا؟
mataa hadatha haadhaa?
When did this happen?
مَتَى سَافَرُوا؟
mataa saafaroo?
When did they travel?
مَتَى وُلِدْت؟
mataa wulidt?
When were you born?
مَا مَعْنَى هَذِهِ الكَلِمَة؟
maa ma’naa haadhihi al-kalimah?
What is the meaning of this word?
مَا هِيَ عَاصِمَة فَرَنْسَا؟
maa hiya ‘aasimat faransaa?
What is the capital of France?
مَا هِيَ المُشْكِلَة؟
maa hiya al-mushkilah?
What is the problem?
مَا هَذَا؟
maa haadhaa?
What is this?
كَيْفَ عَرَفْت؟
kayfa ‘araft?
How did you know?
كَيْفَ نُصْلِح الهَاتِف؟
kayfa nuslih al-haatif?
How do we fix the phone?
كَيْفَ يُمْكِن أَنْ أُسَاعِدَك؟
kayfa yumkin an usaa’idak?
How can I help you?
كَيْفَ حَالُك؟
kayfa haaluk?
How are you?
(Literally: How is your condition)
كَم عُمْرُك؟
kam ‘umruk?
How old are you?
(Literally: how much is your age)
كَم شَخْصَاً قَابَلْت؟
kam shakhsan qaabalt?
How many people did you meet?
كَم تُرِيد؟
kam tureed?
How much do you want?
كَم تَكَلَّفَت الرِّحْلَة؟
kam takallafat ar-rihlah?
How much did the trip cost?
مَاذَا حَدَث؟
maadhaa hadath?
What happened?
مَاذَا قُلْت؟
maadhaa qult?
What did you say?
مَاذَا تُرِيد؟
maadhaa tureed?
What do you want?
مَاذَا فَعَلُوا؟
maadhaa fa’aloo?
What did they do?
لِمَاذا تَبْكِي؟
limaadhaa tabkee?
Why are you crying?
لِمَاذا وَقَعَت الحَادِثَة؟
limaadhaa waqa’at al-haadithah?
Why did the accident happen?
لِمَاذا فَعَلْتَ ذَلِك؟
limaadhaa fa’alta dhaalik?
Why did you do so?
لِمَاذا تَأَخَّرْوا؟
limaadhaa ta’akhkharoo?
Why are they late?
There are other question words that will be covered in later lessons.
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