Table Of Content

Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf THE COLLOQUIAL SERIES Series Adviser: Gary King The following languages are available in the Colloquial series: Afrikaans German Portuguese of Brazil Albanian Greek Romanian Amharic Gujarati Russian Arabic (Levantine) Hausa (forthcoming) Scottish Gaelic Arabic of Egypt Hebrew Serbian Arabic of the Gulf Hindi Slovak Basque Hungarian Slovene Bengali Icelandic Somali Breton Indonesian Spanish Bulgarian Irish Spanish of Latin Cambodian Italian America Cantonese Japanese Swahili Catalan Korean Swedish Chinese Latvian Tamil Croatian Lithuanian Thai Czech Malay Turkish Danish Mongolian Ukrainian Dutch Norwegian Urdu English Panjabi Vietnamese Estonian Persian Welsh Finnish Polish Yoruba French Portuguese Zulu (forthcoming) COLLOQUIAL2s series: The Next Step in Language Learning Chinese German (forthcoming) Russian Dutch Italian Spanish French Portuguese of Brazil Spanish of Latin America All these Colloquials are available in book & CD packs, or separately. You can order them through your bookseller or via our website www.routledge.com. Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf The Complete Course for Beginners Clive Holes First published 1984 by Routledge This edition first published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1984, 2010 Clive Holes Typeset in 9.5/13 Helvetica by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Holes, Clive, 1948– Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf : the complete course for beginners / Clive Holes. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Arabic language—Dialects—Persian Gulf Region— Grammar. 2. Arabic language—Dialects—Arabian Peninsula —Grammar. 3. Arabic language—Textbooks for foreign speakers—English. I. Title. PJ6853.H64 2009 492′.770916535—dc22 2009002438 ISBN13: 978–0–415–43039–5 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–43229–0 (audio CDs) ISBN13: 978–0–415–43228–3 (pack) ISBN13: 978–0–415–48462–6 (MP3) ISBN13: 978–0–203–88331–0 (ebk) Contents Introduction ix How to use this book xi Pronunciation guide xvii Unit 1 1 1.1 Expressions of quantity; 1.2 Orders and requests; 1.3 ʻPleaseʼ,ʼThank youʼ, ʻBe so kindʼ; Vocabulary; Cultural point: The Gulf States and the GCC; Reading Arabic Unit 2 10 2.1 The Arabic equivalent of ʻtheʼ; 2.2 The ʻdualʼ; 2.3 The plural; Vocabulary; Cultural point: History (1): the Portuguese; Reading Arabic Unit 3 23 3.1 ʻHow much/How many?ʼ 3.2 Prices; 3.3 Numbers 1 to 10; 3.4 Greetings; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Food and cooking; Reading Arabic Unit 4 37 4.1 Simple descriptive sentences; 4.2 Noun-adjective phrases; 4.3 Some other types of adjective; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Standard Arabic and Gulf Arabic; Reading Arabic Unit 5 51 5.1 Numbers 11 to 1,000,000; 5.2 Age; 5.3 Telling the time; 5.4 Personal pronouns; 5.5 ʻWho?ʼ and ʻWhat?ʼ; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Currencies, banknotes and stamps; Reading Arabic Review Unit I 69 vi Contents Unit 6 73 6.1 Expressions of place; 6.2 The verb: past tense; Vocabulary; Cultural point: History (2): the British; Reading Arabic Unit 7 88 7.1 Past-tense verbs: verbs beginning with a glottal stop; 7.2 Past-tense verbs: ʻhollowʼ verbs; 7.3 ʻTo say that …ʼ; 7.4 ʻTo ask whether …ʼ; 7.5 liʼannʻbecauseʼ; 7.6 Expressions of manner; 7.7 Further expressions of time; Vocabulary; Cultural point: The Islamic Year; Reading Arabic Unit 8 104 8.1 Noun phrases; 8.2 The elative adjective; 8.3 Word order; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Building traditions; Reading Arabic Unit 9 119 9.1 Past-tense verbs: ʻdoubledʼ verbs; 9.2 Past-tense verbs: ʻweakʼ verbs; 9.3 Time conjunctions; 9.4 Ordinal numbers; 9.5 Months; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Traditional dress: men; Reading Arabic Unit 10 133 10.1 Relative clauses; 10.2 Demonstrative pronouns; 10.3 Demonstrative adjectives; 10.4 The negative in equational sentences; 10.5 ʻSomebodyʼ and ʻnobodyʼ; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Traditional dress: women; Reading Arabic Review Unit II 150 Unit 11 155 11.1 The imperfect verb: basic forms; 11.2 The imperfect verb: different stem types; 11.3 Review of verb forms; 11.4 The uses of the imperfect; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Marriage: traditional and modern; Reading Arabic Unit 12 174 12.1 Verb strings; 12.2 The imperative: strong verbs; 12.3 The imperative: other types of verb; 12.4 The negative imperative; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Driving; Reading Arabic Unit 13 195 13.1 The active participle; 13.2 The passive participle; Vocabulary; Cultural point: In the market; Reading Arabic Contents vii Unit 14 213 14.1 The derived themes of the verb (1); Vocabulary; Cultural point: Football; Reading Arabic Unit 15 233 15.1 The verbal noun; 15.2 Coordinated negatives; 15.3 Compound adjectives; 15.4 ʻSelfʼ; Vocabulary; Cultural point: History (3): the Indians; Reading Arabic Review Unit III 250 Unit 16 255 16.1 The derived themes of the verb (2); 16.2 Conditional sentences; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Tribes; Reading Arabic Unit 17 272 17.1 Quadriliteral verbs; 17.2 ʻTo wish/wantʼ and ʻto preferʼ; 17.3 Verbs with double objects; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Religion, sect and ethnicity; Reading Arabic Unit 18 286 18.1 Diminutives; 18.2 Uses of ábuand umm; 18.3 ʻHow big!ʼ, etc.; 18.4 ʻSo-and-soʼ; 18.5 Forms of personal address; 18.6 Exhortations; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Pearls; Reading Arabic Unit 19 300 19.1 Verb strings involving kaan/yikúun; 19.2 More conjunctions; 19.3 ʻAs ifʼ; 19.4 Expressions meaning ʻI thinkʼ; 19.5 ʻSomeʼ and ʻeach otherʼ; 19.6 Adverbs in -an; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Arabiizi;Reading Arabic Unit 20 316 Texts; Vocabulary; Cultural point: Colloquial poetry; Reading Arabic Answer key 326 Appendix 1: Variations in pronunciation 375 Appendix 2: The Arabic script 380 Gulf Arabic–English glossary 386 English–Gulf Arabic glossary 411 Introduction Who is this book for? This book has been written for anyone who needs to acquire a solid working knowledge of the educated colloquial Arabic spoken in an area extending from Basra in southern Iraq, down through Kuwait, Bahrain, eastern Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. No previous knowledge of Arabic is assumed. The emphasis is on the acquisition of a workingknowledge; therefore, language items needed at the major points of social contact between Gulf Arabs and Western residents are given pride of place. Teachers, engineers, businessmen, military personnel and others who need to be able to communicate in spoken Arabic in schools, offices, shops, markets and the workplace should find this book highly useful. Grammatical explanation is given only where it serves some clarificatory purpose, and much of the book is given over to examples and exercises of a type that the writer hopes the learner will find relevant in coping with day-to-day living in the Gulf. Some texts deal with the customs and beliefs common to the area, and in each unit there is a Cultural point that gives further useful background information on culture, society and history. There is also a simple introduction to reading Arabic road signs, shop signs and other basic types of ʻpublic textʼ written in Literary Arabic. What is ‘Gulf Arabic’? It is estimated that Arabic is spoken as first language by some 250–300 million people, living in a vast geographical area that extends from Morocco to Oman along a west–east axis, and as far south as northern Nigeria and southern Sudan. Pockets of Arabic speakers can be found x Introduction in such far-flung places as Central Asia and Zanzibar. Clearly, in such a large area, there is bound to be considerable dialectal diversity, comparable to the differences between what in Europe are considered separate but related languages: Italian and Spanish, Polish and Russian or Dutch and Standard German. The factor that unites the speakers of this Babel of dialects is the Arabic literary language, which shows relatively little regional variation, and is used for all written communi cation throughout the Arab world. The subject of this book is the educated spoken (not written) Arabic of one fairly large area – the Arabian Gulf – in which, despite dialectal variants that may be specific to the particular states that lie along it, there is such a commonality of usage that it is possible to describe a single set of language forms that will be completely understood in every part of it. This set of language forms is what will henceforth be referred to as ʻGulf Arabicʼ – a variety of Arabic that refers not so much to the Arabic spoken in any one state, but to a variety that is increasingly used by Gulf Arabs from different Gulf states when they converse with each other and with outsiders. In its sound system, grammar and vocabulary, ʻGulf Arabicʼ represents a kind of distillation of the common features of all Gulf dialects, while avoiding the peculiarities of any one area. It also shows the influence of Literary Arabic in its vocabulary, because its users tend to be educated. From the foreignerʼs point of view, this type of spoken Gulf Arabic is likely to be the most useful. Most of the data and examples that were collected for this book come, in fact, from Bahrain – but, where justified, a note of important alternative forms is made. The Western resident will find that even a modest knowledge of Gulf Arabic will hugely repay the effort expended to acquire it. The Arabs are extremely proud of their linguistic heritage, and feel flattered and impressed by Westerners interested enough to have tried to learn their language. From a personal point of view, too, it is very satisfying to be able to make sense out of the babble of unintelligible speech that surrounds one from the moment of arrival at the airport. Apart from its practical value, Gulf Arabic provides a good jumping-off point for the further study of the Arabic language and its culture, should the learner feel inclined. Linguistically, Gulf Arabic is relatively close to Literary Arabic, while, culturally, what remains of Bedouin society provides a modern-day insight into the values and social conditions that gave birth to Islam.