Speaking Arabic: A Course in Conversational Eastern Arabic

208 Pages·2012·7.95 MB·English

by  Elihay J.

J. Elihay
English translation: Carol Sutherland, Susan Fogg
Speaking Arabic
A Course in Conversational
Eastern (Palestinian) Arabic
Book 3
Lessons 31-40
Minerva Publishing House
2010
Minerva Publishing House
P.O.B 7023 Jerusalem 91070, Israel
www.speaking-arabic.com
Copyright © 2010 by J. Elihay
All rights reserved by the publisher
ISBN 978-965-7397-18-3
Contents
Preface [5]
Lesson 31 1
Lesson 32 18
Lesson 33 33
Lesson 34 48
Lesson 35 67
Lesson 36 81
Lesson 37 94
Lesson 38 113
Lesson 39 127
Lesson 40 142
Key to the Exercises 159
Index of Vocabulary and Rules 177
Rules (indicated by a number
inside a square) 191

Preface
In Book 3 we’ll continue our journey along the highways and byways of
colloquial Arabic. We’ll explore all the basic problems, the various sentence
structures and most of the remaining verb Forms.
A little practical advice:
a) You’d do well to refresh your memory by taking another look at the Prefaces
to Books 1 and 2.
b) Once again: It’s vital to move forward, and not linger over every minor
detail. We don’t want you to take months and months to get to the end of the
course; it’s important to progress so that you get an overall picture of the book’s
contents.
Try to study at the rate of around one lesson a week.1 Best not to rush through a
whole lesson in one day, especially as the chapters in this book are longer and
more complex. Small portions are better - for example:
- First course: Read the introductory section of the lesson, listen to the
Conversation and take a quick look at the translation and the related footnotes.
- Second course: Go back over the introduction and listen to the Conversation
again. This time, try to say the words out loud together with the speakers, or at
least repeat each sentence after them. Now it’s time for the Explanations, the
new and most interesting part of the lesson, which will reveal the secrets of the
structures used in the Conversation and make everything clear.
- Third course: Go back to the Explanations and read out loud the examples
they contain. Pay special attention to the Lesson summary in the box: it
contains the essence of the lesson in just a few sentences; if you memorize
them, you can assume that you’ve absorbed the lesson.2 Now you can move on
to the Exercises, and do them in stages, too.
1. At the rate of dars wahad kull ’usbuc you’ll be able to get through the four books
in a year!
2. No, don’t try to be clever and make do with learning just the Lesson summary in the
box! It’s there to provide a summarized reminder of the material you have absorbed by
systematically working your way through the lesson.
- Don’t forget to listen to the recordings now and then throughout the day,
without consulting the printed text (this activity combines nicely with shaving
or peeling vegetables...).
You can create your own study schedule, and vary it according to your needs.
But don’t wait until you can remember everything from one lesson before
moving on to the next. The main thing is to keep going! You can always go
back over anything you’ve forgotten, and the more you revise old material the
better. You’ll remember and understand it even better in the light of the new
things you’ve learnt.
A few more comments
The recordings:
In this book, before you hear the examples from the footnotes, the speaker says
“mulahazfit”, which means comments. These are recorded at the end of each
lesson, for technical reasons.
The subjunctive:
When we provide verb forms in the present-future tense, and observe that they
behave in such-and-such a manner, don’t forget that the same applies to the
subjunctive, which, as you know, is identical to the present-future, except that it
doesn’t have b- in front of it. This means that, when we give you the paradigm
for the past and present-future tenses, you can form the subjunctive by
removing the initial b- (and, of course, ba —> ’a).
Different forms of the same word:
You are already used to seeing the same word appearing in slightly different
variations, e.g., bint / binet, ’inte / ’inta, gurfe / gurfa, mnikteb / bnikteb,
wahed / wahad, ’imm / ’umm, sine / sane (and Sana, too), bikteb /
byikteb, ’ija / ’aja, doktor / daktor, the prefix i- / (e-), etc. The same thing
happens in English: think of the different ways people pronounce “either,”
“often,” “tomato,” etc.
Symbols
If you’ve forgotten any of the symbols we’ve been using in this course, go back
and take a look at pp. [7]-[9] in Book 1 and the Preface to Book 2.
[6]
Dictionary
You will notice that every now and again we direct you to specific entries in the
Dictionary. The reference is to The Olive Tree Dictionary: A Transliterated
Dictionary of Conversational Eastern Arabic (Palestinian), by J. Elihay,
published by Minerva Publishing Hous: www.olive-tree-dictionarv.com
And now let’s set off on the next stage of our journey with map and compass in
hand. Enjoy your trip!
[71

dars wahad u-talatTn
31
Lesson Thirty-One
In Book 2 you learned Form 2 of the verb (also known as f-2 or faccal), e.g.,
kammal. Today we’re going to take a look at what happens to verbs like haka
and biki when they’re slotted into the f-2 pattern. You are already familiar with
the verb in the past tense and you will have realized that such verbs
combine characteristics of both the faccal form (such as the doubling of the
middle letter of the root) and of paradigms like haka, haket... Now we’re going
to review the entire conjugation.
The verb rabba = to bring up, raise, educate; to breed, rear
Past tense Present-future tense
rabbet I raised ba-rabbi I raise / will raise
rabbet youm Slng raised bet-rabbi youmang raise...
rabbeti youslng raised bet-rabbi youm s,ng raise...
rabba he raised bi-rabbi he raises
rabbat she raised bet-rabbi she raises
rabbSnu we raised men- // ben-rabbi we raise
rabbetu youp[ raised bet-rabbu youpX raise
rabbu they raised bi-rabbu they raise
The active participle is mrabbi / murabbi1 (f) mrabbye [mrabbyln /
mrabbln] = having brought up/having raised; educator; breeder.
The passive participle is mrabba (f) mrabbaye [mrabbayin] =
{well) brought up.
The verbal noun (VN) is tarbiye / tirbay or tirbaye;2 All three words obey
Rules [2] [8j
An additional example: the active participle of I)abba {to hide / conceal) is
mljabbi:
1. This version, which starts with mu-, is more literary (see Book 2, p. 107, footnote 3).
2. The first word, tarbiye, can be translated as education, and it is used in schools,
psychology lectures, etc. The second, tirbaye, is closer to the English upbringing, as it
refers to education within the home, it-tarbiyej-hadlse = modern education (as
opposed to old-fashioned methods), while SU hat-tirb5ye?! means What [kind of]
upbringing is that?! tirbay to mumtaze means He's been very well brought up <his
upbringing is excellent^ On the short form tirbay see Explanations 1.