Arabic Instructor
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With the exception of Parts I and II, this may be the most important part of this book. Read it and think about it. Foreigners coming to America have often commented on the industriousness and ingenuity of the people they have found here. You have no doubt had quotes from Arnold Toynbee to this effect…
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In Part II Chapter 4, I discussed the use of a dictionary in a manner designed to increase reading effectiveness. I discussed the necessity of not looking up every new word, of reading blocks of text before resorting to the dictionary in the first place, and of not writing down the meanings of words you…
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Chapter 1 271 The Little Words No One Ever Learns but Which are Very Important 271 Chapter 2 288 A: Defective Nouns and Adjectives 288 B: Diptotes 292 C: Indeclinable Nouns and Adjectives 295 D: Doubly Transitive Verbs 296 E. False Idaafas 298 Chapter 3 300 Arabic Numbers 300 Chapter 4 314 A: How To…
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Chapter 1 63 A: Sound Verbs, Form I 63 Sound Verbs, Form I: the Jussive 67 B: Hollow Verbs, Form I 71 Hollow Verbs, Form I: Present Tense 74 Hollow Verbs, Form I: the Jussive 76 C: Defective Verbs, Form I 82 Defective Verbs, Form I: Present Tense 87 Defective Verbs, Form I: the Jussive…
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The verb رأى, يرى is perhaps the only truly irregular verb in the language. In the past tense it conjugates exactly like the verb بني, يبني However, in the present tense this verb has two peculiarities. The first is that the middle radical, the hamza, disappears completely. The second is that it ends in an…
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Below is a list in Arabic of some of the more common colors. Color Plural (M. and F.) Feminine Masculine Black سودٌ سَوْداءُ أَسْودُ White بيضٌ بَيْضاءُ أَبْيَضُ Red حُمرٌ حَمراءُ أَحمَرُ Green خُضرٌ خَضْراءُ أخْضَرُ Blue زُرْقٌ زرْقاءُ أَزْرَقُ Yellow صُفْرٌ صَفْراءُ أَصْفَرُ The masculine singular forms of the colors above have the…
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In Modern Standard Arabic the ordinal numbers are used to tell time. Although in colloquial Arabic, the cardinal numbers are usually used, in the media, the MSA forms are used so it is good to know them. Below is a review of telling time using MSA. The review is brief, but it should give you…
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The following is a review of the number system in Modern Standard Arabic and how it is used grammatically. The discussion below will cover both cardinal and ordinal numbers as well as a few other details. Most of what is below can be found in chapters 15 and 21 of volume one of EMSA but…
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Idaafas are treated in detail in Part I. However, in Part I, the focus is on idaafas composed of two or more nouns in a row and there is considerable stress on the fact that only nouns are used in an idaafa construction. There is another type of idaafa which does not occur any where…
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The material below is based largely on material dealing with the same subject in Chapters 34 and 44 of EMSA, Vol. II. Look there for more examples. Some verbs in Arabic will have two accusative objects. The verb “to give” أعطى is perhaps the most commonly used example. In English we understand that one of…