Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ismi Emily surprised .... xd I'm such a dork.

No, you're right, I was eventually going to talk about that (I was actually going to write it in a series of vocabulary), so didn't worry, I thought about it. But, there are still a couple of things left to discuss before I start writing out the vocabulary. Not to mention, there probably will be grammar lessons in the future too (verbs, nouns, etc...).

Besides, I don't think I should move on to vocabulary or grammar now. I think we should give people time to learn to read the letters first, and memorize their forms. I (or Ayyar) don't want to just throw out lessons one after another. People need to catch up, and as far as I know, not everyone who has followed up with the thread so far (those that are learning, I mean) knows how to read Arabic perfectly, or has memorized how each letter sounds, or looks like in different positions in a word. This takes time, especially that it's another set of alphabet. Besides, I would rather have the people know how to read Arabic first, rather than have to write out transliterations everytime I give a word in Arabic (I frankly hate writing transliterations. They're just frustrating and can never be exact. scream ). If I give transliterations everytime, people won't see the need to learn to read Arabic.

Believe me, I'm not just saying this because I speak Arabic. I'm learning many languages on the side myself, one of which uses a different alphabet, and for me as a learner, I want to make sure to spend enough time to learn how to read the language first, before I move on to any other aspect. For me, it's much easier this way.

Sabah Alkheer(Good morning) All,

GOOD topic Anima Maledicta
GOOD Job Ayyar

I am new member here smile . Arabic is my mother tongue, so maybe I will try to help you guys if you need anything. Also maybe I can improve my second language "English laguage" by your help redface .

Have a good day.

Wa3alaykom Assalam wara7mato Allah wabarakatoh askhanswhat

The Sentence
الجُمْلَة
(Al-Jumlah)

Let us begin saying coherent phrases. As we go along we will examine words, their pronunciations, and why they sound the way they do.

Arabic has two types of sentences, جُمْلَة فِعْلية (Jumlah Fi3liyah) and جُمْلَة إسمية (Jumlah Ismiyah).

الجُمْلَة الفعلية
(Al-Jumlah Al-Fi3liyah)

Here is the structure of the Jumla Al-Fi3liyah:

Verb Subject Object

Let us apply this:

أكَلَ أحَمَدٌ التُفاحة
(Akala Ahmadun A-ttufa[h]ata)
This translates to: "Ahmad ate (the) apple".

The verb here is أكَلَ. It is made up of the letters Alif, Kaf, and Lam. But we pronounce it 'Akala' as you can see from the diacritics. The final vowel in Akala is the "Fat[h]a" because it is in the past tense. Here are other words in past tense:

كَتَبَ (he) wrote
رَفَعَ (he) lifted
وَجَد (he) found



As you can see the words are (in order from the top down):

Kataba (he wrote)
Rafa3a (he lifted)
Wajada (he found)

These are all in the past tense for the male. What about for the female? The verb for the female has a Ta' added to it, the Ta' is called "Ta' A-ta'neeth". Look at the verbs in female form:

كتبت (she) wrote
رفعت (she) lifted
وجدت (she) found


These are pronounced (from the top down):

Katabat
Rafa3at
Wajadat

As you can see, the /t/ at the end of each word means the verb is female. And you can see that the /t/ at the end does not have a vowel because it has no value other than to make the verb female.

Back to our example, you can see now that Akala is a verb in the past tense for a male. Let's review the structure:

Verb Subject Object

The Subject in the sentence is the word أحمد (Ahmad). As you may or may not know, Ahmad is a common Arabic name. So if we look at the sentence so far, it says: "Akala Ahmadun" (Ahmad ate...). Why does Ahmad have that /un/ sound at the end? Ahmad is the verb, and the verb always has a /un/ at then end, this is called "Tanween bi-[D]amma" (Nunation with the [D]amma). Of course some subjects will be special cases where they won't have the Tanween, but these come later.

As we said, the sentence so far is "Ahmad ate". What did Ahmad eat? Ahmad ate the apple (A-ttufa[h]ata). A-ttufa[h]ata is the Object in our sentence, without it, the sentence can make no sense. The word for apple is "Tufa[h]a". Then why did we write "A-ttufa[h]ata"? We wrote it that way because Ahmad did not eat an apple, he ate the apple. And as you can see from the Arabic text, it's written as "Al-tufa[h]a".

So why didn't we pronounce the /l/ sound in "Al"? Well really because it's heavy on the Arabic tongue, and would sound weird, instead, we remove the /l/ from pronunciation and we add a "Shadda" to the /t/ sound. In other words, we drop the /l/ and we stress the /t/, by stressing the /t/ we imply that there is an /l/ sound that has been dropped. This case is called "Lam Shamsiyah" (umm... Solar Lam...that's as close as I can get stare ) We will talk about Lam Shamsiyah and Lam Qamariyah (...Lunar Lam?) in another lesson, for now, know that we stress the /t/ and drop the /l/ when there's "Al" before a word beginning with /t/. And that this is only in the beginning of a word.

Our question is still unanswered, though. Why did we write it "A-ttufa[h]ata" and not "A-ttufa[h]a"? The letters that make up the word "Tuffa[h]a" are : Ta', Fa', [H]a', and Ta' Marboota. The Ta' Marboota is at the end of the word and is usually silent (we don't pronounce it), but since this is an object, it's ending vowel is the Fat[h]a, and it goes on the last letter, here, the last letter is the silent Ta', and when the Fat[h]a goes on the silent Ta', the Ta's is pronounced, so that we can show that a Fat[h]a is there.

But why is it "A-ttufa[h]ata" and not "A-ttufa[h]atan" like you made A[h]mad into A[h]madun?

This is because it is preceded by Al, when Al comes before the word, we know that we are talking about the apple not an apple so we don't add the nunation. But if we remove the Al, it becomes "Tuffa[h]atan".

This, of course does not apply to A[h]mad, because A[h]mad is a proper noun.

(To be continued...)

Well, that's all I can come up with for today, we're still not done with the Jumla Fi3liyah. So expect another lesson in a long while (not too long, but this is a LOT to absorb so it's going to be a while).

For further practice, here is a sort of assignment you can do.

1. Write a sentence, using the structure, which tells that you ate an apple, use Akala(t), your name, and "ttufa[h]a"

2. Write a sentence using the structure which tells that you wrote a book. Use Kataba(t), your name, and "Kitab", apply the correct vowel sound to the end of the word (Kitaban/ Al-Kitaba).

Good luck, and don't let the long lesson scare you sweatdrop

sweatdrop Sorry....

Don't read the whole thing at once, and if you do, read it more than once, because it's rather hard to grasp. I probably should make those shorter xp

The Sentence
Simplifying part one...

Just thought I'd make it easier for those who didn't get the lesson I posted. Here's a simplification. Read this for the basics, read the above one for the more detailed analysis.

--

One type of sentence (Jumlah) is Al-Jumlah Al-Fi3liyah. It's made up of:

Verb Subject Object.

You tell that it is a Jumlah Fi3liyah by looking for two things: the verb and the subject.

Here's an example:

أكل أحمد التفاحة

(Akala Ahmadun A-ttufahata)

It means: Ahmad ate the apple.
In Arabic it would read ithe order:

Verb Subject Object
Akala Ahmadun A-ttufahata

So 'Akala' is a verb. It means he ate. It's made up of three letters: A, K, L.

Ahmadun is the subject, Ahmad is a name, he is the person doing the eating.

A-ttufahata is the object, it's the thing that Ahmad is doing the eating to.

That's how Ahmad ate the apple.

New Vocabulary:

Akala: Vb- EAT; MANAGE; BITE; RUN THROUGH
Akala mostly means eat.
For a female, you would say: Akalat.
For two people you would say: Akalaa
For many males: Akaloo
For many females: Akalna (short /a/)

Tuffaha: N- APPLE
To say "the apple" you say A-ttufaha.
You stress the /t/ when you say A-ttufaha

--

This is the really basic version of the lesson above. You can just read this and it'll make perfect sense. If you want to go really deep into the language, read the first lesson. Of course, you can leave that lesson out and read it when you are more advanced.

Next lesson we will discuss another aspect of the Jumlah Fi3liyah, before moving on to the Jumlah Al Ismiyah.

Oh, and questions are very welcomed, as they provide feedback and keep us all on the right track. Have fun smile