Lessons in Palestinian Arabic: Now on Lesson 2

[tiramisu]

سلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته

Ayuha ya ikhwati,
I had the unfortunate privilege of taking a blow off course in Palestinian Arabic while in Palestine last year. As such, I bought a series of books teaching the dialect, with an audience towards people with no knowledge of Arabic. Needless to say, I never used them and in fact only showed up to class once a week.

But, as Yng can probably vouch, my understanding of colloquial Arabic is in need of much more structure and formal study. Indeed, I have no formal knowledge of colloquial Arabic save from what I got out of this class I never went to. So I have decided to work through these books.

For multiple reasons, I thought it would be good for both me and this board were I to include lessons that coincide with my own ventures in these books. In the end, I hope the extra work I put in by presenting these lessons will help ingrain the structure of the dialect in my head. Owing to what I find to be the simplicity of the lessons, and bearing in mind the amount of work it will take to present the lessons to you, I hope to provide 2 lessons per week. As I just found some employment, bear with me if it turns out to be less often.

About the Course

I will be using this series. In Jerusalem and Ramallah, you can find each book/CD as low as 70 shekels. You can find them as high as 100-120 shekels, a price you should never pay for them. Abroad, it's difficult and/or impossible to find them below $35 each, and on Amazon it costs $150 for the entire series. It is unnecessary that you buy it for this course, nor do I believe it's worth such high a price.

Nevertheless I am attracted to the style of these books, though looking through them I am sometimes astounded at the illogical order. With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm just biased, having a formal knowledge of Arabic grammar. It might actually be extremely logical for a newcomer to the language.

Unfortunately, I decided not to spend money on the first book in the series, so I do not have it in my collection. The course will therefore begin with improvisation. The first few lessons will introduce you to the (phonetic!) transcription method of the book, and will attempt to introduce the concepts and basic vocabulary introduced in the first book. As I do not have access to the first book, this means I will have to identify what the second book in the series assumes we already know. I apologize sincerely if this leads to any deficiency in the course.

In order to get to the books as quickly as possible, these first few lessons will be shorter, involve more memorization, less practice, and possibly no audio. (Any audio will have to be provided by myself, and my microphone is broken). Once we begin the books, lessons will be provided in segments. First, I will present the vocabulary of the lesson. Second and third (the order will depend on the lesson), I will present a grammar lesson and dialogues accompanied with audio. Lastly I will provide the translation exercises provided in the books, and will gladly check over your answers. I may add to the exercises if I feel they're inadequate.

If we go through the entire series, there will be a total of about 35-40 lessons, and this thread will be active for 20-30 weeks. We all know how that goes, though.

About the Dialect

In brief:

The Palestinian dialect is the name given to a series of closely related dialects in historical Palestine, which actually tend to vary from city to city, as well as from village to city. As far as I know, the only thing they all have in common as opposed to other dialects is geography. They are very closely related to the dialects of Arabic spoken in Lebanon and Syria, with some Palestinian dialects actually closer to some Lebanese dialects than they are to the dialect taught in this course. They are all collectively considered the Levantine (sometimes "Eastern") dialect as they are more or less perfectly mutually intelligible.

The dialect taught in this course is the dialect spoken in Jerusalem. The author graciously provides some alternatives used in the Galilean dialects, though it seems to only be enough so as to allow the reader to understand what the Galilean is saying rather than to allow him any competency to use the dialect. Luckily, my own background is not in the Jerusalem dialect, but in a southern Galilean dialect, and hopefully I can answer any questions you may have that may arise. I will not, however, be teaching the Galilean dialect alongside Jerusalem's any more than Elihay does. I fear it might lead to confusion, and may even choose not to include what he does. With that said, I strongly believe there is no dialect of Arabic more beautiful than that of the Galilee.

Editted in: I found this map of the Levantine dialects. It took me forever to find and it turns out to have been located on the Levantine Arabic Wikipedia page.
What we are studying is the dialect in green. The Galilean dialect is the dialect in light blue, which extends much further south than depicted (even into the West Bank).

As you guys express interest, I will be using spare time to look into how I should begin, and hope to have the first lesson available by Monday. Again, bear with me for the first few lessons, which will be relatively thick and content-heavy.

[Astraios]

Crap, this reminds me I have to buy a dictionary for class before Tuesday.

Also, yay. I'm absorbing spoken Arabic faster than I thought I would, considering I don't actually speak Arabic to anyone, but I need moar.

[tiramisu]

Astraios, weren't you religiously obligated to be wasted around the same time you made that post? #caught #notkosher

[Astraios]

In actual fact I rather was. See the Drunk Thread for proof. I'm still not 100% sober either.

[hwhatting]

I dabbled a bit in Lebanese Arabic a few years ago. Would be interesting to see the similarities and differences.

[tiramisu]

The following is the transcription method used in this course. I have adapted the method to be more user friendly to those of us who do not enjoy copying and pasting a lot, with the assumption that you have an international keyboard installed. It is arranged in (Roman) alphabetical order, followed by the phonetic realization. I am posting this without any other content to spur discussion and recommendations for alterations to the transcription method before we begin. Watch this post for editing over the next several days.

2 [ʔ]
3 [ʕ]
a [æ]
â [æː]
A [ɑ]
 [ɑː]
À [ɑ]**
b [b]
d [d]
D [dˤ]
ð [ð]
e [ɛ]
ê [ɛː]
è [e]**
f [f]
g [ɣ]
h [h]
H [ħ]
i [i]
î [iː]
j [dʒ]/[ʒ]
k [k]
l [l]
m [m]
n [n]
o [o]
ô [oː]
q [ʔ]***
Q [q]
r [r]
s [s]
S [sˤ]
ʃ [ʃ]
t [t]
T [tˤ]
u [u]
û [uː]
w [w]
x [x]
y [j]
z [z]
Z [zˤ]
Tiebar ( ⁀ ): Used to indicate the merging of the last syllable of a word and the first syllable of the proceeding word, often through elision.
Superscripts: Superscripts will be used to communicate to you that the sound is extra-short. With vowels, these exist primarily to ease speech due to consonant clusters. With consonants, this indicates an historical pronunciation that partially or completely suffers from lenition, depending on the speaker. This is for your reference and it is not necessary for you to copy superscripts unless you really want to.

**<À> and <è> are feminine markers; when feminine nouns are possessed by another nominal, they become <At> [ɑt] and <et> [ɛt] respectively.
***<q> is pronounced [ʔ] in the Jerusalem dialect. We remain the distinction <q> in this course because other dialects both near and far from Jerusalem pronounce it [k] or [g] or [q]. If I produce any audio, I will likely be using [k] out of habit; you may also come across audio from the course where speakers use [k]. In some words, <q> maintains a [q] pronunciation, which will be distinguished with <Q>.

[Astraios]

I'd most rather you just write everything in IPA. :\

Also, you wrote [ɤ] where I assume you meant [ɣ].

[Io]

What's up with Palestinian ayin? When I went on a hike north of Nazareth towards the direction of طرعان and I had to ask people about it, others stopped me to ask me where I'm going so I heard its name from probably half a dozen people and all of them pronounced it with a really REALLY strong ayin. The previous days I had been in Syria and Jordan and I didn't hear such mighty throat squeezing.

[tiramisu]

I'd most rather you just write everything in IPA. :\

Also, you wrote [ɤ] where I assume you meant [ɣ].

I would write in IPA would it not be a pain in an ass for me x)
But yeah I meant [ɣ].

What's up with Palestinian ayin? When I went on a hike north of Nazareth towards the direction of طرعان and I had to ask people about it, others stopped me to ask me where I'm going so I heard its name from probably half a dozen people and all of them pronounced it with a really REALLY strong ayin. The previous days I had been in Syria and Jordan and I didn't hear such mighty throat squeezing.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've always felt that ayin was noticeably weak in that area! I haven't been to Syria or Jordan, though -- although Jordan's sort of a melting pot of Arabs, so what you were hearing there could have been from anywhere (though most likely it was actually a Palestinian dialect).

[Ser]

c [ʕ]

Just use numbers man...

Do you really need to distinguish [D_?\] from [z_?\] too?

[tiramisu]

c [ʕ]

Just use numbers man...

Superscript <c> is a common transcription, which is why I used non-superscript <c>.

If we use numbers, do people mind <3> for [?\] and <2> for [?]?

Do you really need to distinguish [D_?\] from [z_?\] too?

[/quote]
Nope. I think my line of thinking was that since there is some distinguishing between [D] and [z], there would also be some between [D_?\] and [z_?\]. That same distinction happens with the pharyngealized forms, but [D_?\] has merged with [d_?\] in that distinction.

[Drydic]

Could you switch one of circumflex or diaresis out for something else? At non-bold/italic size 12 they can be difficult to distinguish from each other. Plus the top of the circumflex on capitals can get cut off by the previous line, thus looking like a diaresis

Yeah the page can just be zoomed in, I'm just sure it'd be appreciated if that didn't have to be done.

[tiramisu]

Lesson 1

Roots and patterns

Everybody’s favorite aspect of Arabic seems to be its triconsonantal root system. Due to extreme ablaut, Semitic languages like Arabic create the illusion that three consonants by themselves carry semantic value. For this course, it will do well for the student to keep the system in mind, but we will only mention it explicitly on occasion.

Definite Article

The definite article in Palestinian Arabic is il, but thanks to processes causing both elision and assimilation, it can take on many forms. In Arabic, vowels become elided when they begin a word. (Be careful – as English speakers, you might mistake a word beginning with a glottal stop for one that begins with a vowel.) Since il begins with a vowel, is elided whenever the previous word ends in a vowel.

il-walad – the boy
mîn fi⁀l-bêt? – who is in the house?

il is a unique particle in Arabic, as the [l] also suffers from assimilation! Luckily, as linguists, this should be easy for you to pick up – whenever the word following il begins with an alveolar consonant, the [l] geminates that consonant. Since <j> was originally velar, it is an exception to this rule in some dialects of Arabic.

id-dâr – the house
is-sitt – the lady; the grandmother
yôm il-jum3a – Friday (lit. day of the congregation)

An adjective takes on the definite article if it meets these two conditions:
1) the noun it describes is definite
2) the noun it describes is in the same noun phrase

is-sitt il-kabîrè – the old lady
is-sitt kabîrè – the lady is old
sitt⁀id-dâr ᵉzgîrè – the lady of the house is young

Masculine / Feminine

Masculine nouns and adjectives are generally unmarked in Arabic.

il-2âb – the father
il-2âb iz-zgîr – the young father

Feminine nouns and adjectives are marked with <À> or <è>.

iʃ-ʃAnTÀ il-ᵉkbîrè – the big bag

Verbs are also conjugated according to gender, though Palestinian Arabic only conjugates for gender for 2nd and 3rd person singular, with only some dialects conjugating for 3rd person plural as well.

Something cool about Arabic, which is often associated with misogyny, is that non-human loanwords are automatically borrowed as feminine. Thanks to the broken plural system discussed below, femininity is the default form of a noun (:

Duals & Plurals

Important in Palestinian Arabic is the dual noun, primarily because you cannot express the dual using an actual number! This is true. Although I’m sure I heard it when I was a child counting in Arabic with my father, I was 21 years old when I first heard “two” in his native dialect – memorable because sᵉntên is very different from most dialects (in Jerusalem, ᵉtnên, and in Standard Arabic, iθnên). The point of this anecdote is that the word is used surprisingly little, simply because there aren’t many contexts for it.

The dual is, however, very easy. In masculine nouns, you simply add –ên to the stem. In feminine nouns, you replace the feminine ending (<À >, <è>) with –tên.

SAHbè “one girl friend” --> SAHᵉbtên “two girl friends”
ʃAnTÀ “one bag” --> ʃAnTAtên “two bags”
walad “one boy”--> waladên “two children”

Plural nouns are not so simple, unfortunately. Feminine nouns, simply enough, replace <À> or <è> with <Ât> or <at> respectively. Some masculine nouns – almost always referring to humans, and usually beginning with an m- – simply add –în to the stem.

SAHbè “one girl friend” --> SAHbât “girl friends”
ʃAnTÀ “one bag” --> ʃAnTÂt “bags”
muTreb “one singer” --> muTrebîn “singers”

Most masculine nouns, however, have broken plurals. Broken plurals rearrange the word pattern so that the vowels change, sometimes adding consonants and affixes as well. They are somewhat predictable, but not enough to prevent you from needing to memorize the plural of every masculine noun. In vocab lists, masculine plurals are preceded with “j.”

walad “one boy”  ᵉwlâd “children”
bêt “one house”  boyût “houses”

Note that plural nouns are only used for a quantity of 3-10. Anything over 10 will use the singular noun!

Adjectives describing non-human plural nouns, whether masculine or feminine, are made plural with the feminine marker <À> or <è>.

boyût ᵉkbîrè – big houses

Vocabulary

wa, u – and
kîf – how
kîf Hâlak/ik? – how are you? (-ak to a male; -ik to a female)
ʃû/2eʃ – what
2imta/mata – when
wên – where
lêʃ - why
mîn – who
sitt – lady; grandmother; woman; wife
2emm – mother
2âb – father
walad j. ᵉwlâd – boy
bint j. ibnât, binât – girl
2ahᵉl – family, people
bêt j. boyût – house; home
dâr – house; family
qalb j. qulûb – heart
TAyyeb (feminine: TAybè) – good, okay
il-HAmdulillAh – thank God
ʃAnTÀ – bag
bAnTAlôn – pants
TAwîl (ᵉTwîl) – long; tall (people)
qASîr (ᵉqSîr) – short
SAgîr (ᵉzgîr) – small; young (people)
kabîr (ᵉkbîr) – big; old (people)
muʃ - not

Possession & Nominal Dependency

A common phenomenon in Arabic is nominal dependency, occurring in cases of possession. This phenomenon is common in Semitic languages and refers to the dependency of one noun on another.

Dependent nouns are possessed nouns. They occur right before the independent noun, the possessor. Independent nouns are unaffected by the process in Palestinian Arabic, but dependent nouns must follow these parameters:

1) They must drop the definite article.
2) Feminine nouns ending in <À> or <è> become <At> or <et> through a process similar to liaison in French.
3) Dual or masculine plural nouns ending in –ên/-în must drop the n. This is left over from Proto-Semitic, which marked independent nouns with a final nasal.

ʃAnTAt⁀il-2emm – the mother’s purse
2ahl⁀il-bêt – the family of the house
waladê⁀l-2âb – the father’s two boys

Note that dependent nouns are always definite! There are ways around this, but we’ll cover it later on.

ʃAnTAt⁀il-2emm il-kabîrè – the mother’s big purse or the old mother’s purse
2ahl⁀il-bêt il-ᵉkbîr – the big family of the house or the family of the big house
waladê⁀l-2âb il-ᵉkbîrên – the father’s two oldest boys
waladê⁀l-2âb il-ᵉkbîr – the old father’s two boys

Copula

Something very nice about Arabic is the absence of a “be” verb in most sentences. Arabic does have a “be” verb, but it’s only used when it lends semantic value to a sentence.

il-bAnTAlônât ᵉqSîrè – the (multiple pairs of) pants are short
il-2âb walad is-sitt – the father is the son of the grandmother

fi / fîʃ

An interesting development in spoken Arabic is a development from the preposition “in.” Today, “fi” has come to mean “there is” alongside "in."

fi walad – there is a boy
ʃû fi⁀ʃ-ʃAnTÀ – what’s in the bag?

To say “there is not,” you can use “ma fîʃ” – often reduced to simply “fîʃ.”

fîʃ ʃAnTÀ – there is no bag
lêʃ ma fîʃ 2âb fi⁀l-bêt? – why isn’t there a father in the home?

Dialogue

1: marHAbA.
2: marHAbtên.
1: kîf HÂlak?
2: TAyyeb. kîf HÂlik?
1: TAybè.
2: kîf il-walad?
1: il-HAmdulillAh. kîf il⁀ᵉwlâd?
2: TAyyebîn, il-HAmdulillAh.

Exercises

Translate, then gloss:
1) mîn is-sitt?
2) wên iʃ-ʃAnTAt?
3) u wên iʃ-ʃAnTÀ⁀T-TAwîlè?
4) kîf il-2âb?
5) mîn 2emm il-walad?
6) mîn fi⁀l-2ahᵉl?
7) wên il-bêt?
8) wên id-dâr?
9) il-bAnTAlôn ᵉqSîrè wa muʃ ᵉTwîlè
10) mîn il-walad il-ᵉkbîr?
11) ʃû fi⁀d-dâr?
12) qalb⁀il-2emm ᵉkbîr
13) il-walad iz-zgîr w⁀il-binât il-ᵉkbîrât
14) il-walad il-kabîr w⁀il-bint iz-zgîrè
15) qulûb il-binât muʃ ᵉkbîrè?

Translate. The sentence provided is how the sentence would be phrased in English. In some exercises, the sentence is accompanied by another in parentheses with word-for-word Arabic phrasing. Try your best to translate without looking at the sentence in parentheses:
1) How are you? (to a female)
2) Where are the houses?
3) Where is there a family?
4) Who is the old lady?
5) Where is the young father?
6) How is the lady’s oldest boy? (How is the lady’s old boy?)
7) Why is the heart good?
8) The bag is small. (The bag is short.)
9) The family of the house is a big one. (The family of the house is big).
10) How is the father’s youngest daughter? (How is the father’s young daughter?)

Answer the following questions and provide an example for each. As they were designed to make you think deep, you may not know the answer to some.
1) How are feminine nouns marked? One marker is an allophone of the other; can you tell which is the allophone and which is the phoneme?
2) How do you mark dual masculine nouns?
3) How do you mark dual feminine nouns?
4) When are adjectives that qualify definite nouns not marked definite?
5) When does the definite article suffer assimilation?
6) When are nouns dependent on other nouns?
7) What happens when a feminine noun becomes a dependent noun?
8) Can you tell how to negate a sentence without a verb?
9) How do you know whether an adjective qualifies a dependent noun or an independent noun in a dependency phrase? Can it be ambiguous?

Give the plural of each noun:
1) walad
2) ʃAnTÀ
3) sitt
4) bint
5) bAnTAlôn
6) qalb
7) bêt

Give the feminine of each adjective:
1) ᵉkbîr
2) ᵉqSîr
3) ᵉTwîl
4) ᵉzgîr
5) TAyyeb

[Astraios]

Exercises 10 and 15 look to me with typos.

This was almost exactly the same stuff as the first lesson in my textbook, except colloquial. That's fun.

[tiramisu]

Thanks. 15 had a typo that was fixed. 10 didn't have a typo, but used a colloquial variant of kabîr; I changed it for consistency's sake.

I imagine it covered the same topics because you really need to know how to use nouns before you can do anything in Arabic. The fact that Arabic doesn't require a verb really makes nominal essentials the only logical first step.

[Astraios]

Oh cool. I was thinking it was the plural somehow - my brain isn't on yet.

[tiramisu]

Vowels shift a lot in spoken Arabic, and especially in Palestinian Arabic. Unfortunately - as per my informal and unstructured knowledge of the dialect - I don't always know when or why it happens, I just have to rely on my own instincts until we get to the book's lessons. I recall my cousin really slowly referring to me as "<my name> l-ᵉkbîr," for "<my name> il-kabîr." My name ends in a consonant. As such, I have no idea why he elided the definite article's vowel or why I became ᵉkbîr instead of kabîr.

[Astraios]

In Maltese at least, the definite article is just the plain consonant /l/, and any vowel associated with it is epenthetic (unless it belongs to the preceding word, obviously). If you say il-walad l-ᵉkbîr is a colloquial variant of il-walad il-kabîr then it seems that's a wider-spread analysis of the article than just Maltese, and it's optional where you put the epenthesis for...some reason. So what you get is sorta lᵉ-kbîr, rather than l-ᵉkbîr.

I should stop distracting from the lessons...

[Khvaragh]

mutreb “one singer” --> mutrebîn “singers”

muTreb, from مطرب.
مترب means "dusty."

SAgîr (ᵉZgîr) – small; young (people)
kabîr – big; old (people)

Are you sure? The reason I ask is that in Lebanese and Syrian, these are respectively /zGi:r/ and /kbi:r~k@bi:r/, since short vowels in these dialects tend to vanish when preceded or followed by syllables with long vowels, since the long vowels get the stress. Emphasis tends to block this, though in the case of /zGi:r/, I generally do not hear the first consonant pronounced as an emphatic (note the same thing happened in Syriac, which has the cognate /z?\or~z?\ur/ for this word).

fi / fîʃ
An interesting development in spoken Arabic was a semantic shift for the preposition “in.” Today, “fi” has come to mean “there is.”
To say “there is not,” you can use “ma fîʃ” – often reduced to simply “fîʃ.”

Not exactly. It comes from CA /fi:hi/ "in it/him." It's notable that this is even suggested by the usual writing of this word as فيه, the same way the CA word is written. مافيس comes from /ma: fi:hi shaj?in/ "there's nothing in it." Egyptian Arabic uses the exact same words, and Lebanese/Syrian have the less reduced /ma: fi: Si:/ "there is nothing;" the /Si:/ is somewhat optional, but in the Syrian dubbed Turkish soap operas I've seen, it's usually the unreduced form. To compensate, Classical /fi:/ is often reduced (not just in front of /il/-) to /fi/, as in Egyptian /fi mas_?\r/ "in Egypt."

[tiramisu]

SAgîr (ᵉZgîr) – small; young (people)
kabîr – big; old (people)

Are you sure?

Nope. Hence

Unfortunately - as per my informal and unstructured knowledge of the dialect - I don't always know when or why it happens, I just have to rely on my own instincts until we get to the book's lessons.

Emphasis tends to block this

How do you propose I best deal with this? For instance, should I introduce SAgîr/kabîr as ᵉzgîr or as ᵉkbîr instead? Should I make note of this phenomenon, or should I let it go?

though in the case of /zGi:r/, I generally do not hear the first consonant pronounced as an emphatic

This claim is actually backed by the book series I am using.

fi / fîʃ
An interesting development in spoken Arabic was a semantic shift for the preposition “in.”

Not exactly.

I understood the process as such. As Yng pointed out last night as well, the lessons are slightly inaccurate as a result of my effort to be brief. The purpose of this sentence here, although in my carelessness misleading, was to emphasize that fi is also a preposition. I do notice, however, distinction between fi ('there is') and fîh ('in it') in speakers who distinguish final [h], so that it is identical to the preposition by itself. And as I mentioned to Yng, there is a need not to overwhelm beginners with information irrelevant to their ability to use it.

With that said, accuracy is important up until it's irrelevant. So thank you so much for your input Khvaragh. It really improves both the lessons and the systemic understanding that I myself am seeking in writing these lessons.

And thanks to anybody patiently following these first lessons as we work out the kinks.

[tiramisu]

I just added a map to the introductory post that depicts where this dialect is spoken.

[tiramisu]

Lesson 2

Vocabulary

bass/lâken – but
sayyÂrÀ – car
3ArAbiyyè – wagon; cart; toy car
mASᵉr – Egypt
falasTîn – Palestine
TArîq – way; path; road
gurfè (j. guruf) – room
madrasè (j. madarris) – school
ʃâf-iʃûf – see
jâb-ijîb – bring
qâl-iqûl – say
rÂH-irûH – go
SÂr-iSîr –become; begin
la2 – no
2A/aywA – yes
2ila – to
3ind – at, to
3a(la) – on
yAllA – come on; let’s go
zayy – like

Subject Pronouns

Luckily, Arabic is a pro-drop language. Subject pronouns are primarily used in sentences without verbs, or to clarify or emphasize the subject. In fact, some subject pronouns begin with what was a Proto-Afro-Asiatic emphatic marker *2an. Anyway, here they are:

Singular
ana – I
inte – you (masculine); inti – you (feminine)
huwwe – he, it (masculine); hiyye – she, it (feminine)

Plural
iHna – we
intû – you guys
humme – they (masculine); hinne (feminine)

Note that dual pronouns no longer exist in Palestinian Arabic.

Object Pronouns

Object pronouns are usually enclitics suffixed to the verb.
Singular
-ni – me
-ak – you (masculine); -ek – you (feminine)
-ʰo – him, it (masculine); -ha – her, it (feminine)

Plural
-na – us
-kom – you guys
-hom – them

Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns are almost identical to object pronouns. They, of course, attach to a noun rather than a verb. The only difference is in the first person singular, whose possessive form ends in –i instead of –ni.
Recall that, through liaison, feminine markers <À> and <è> become <At> and <et> when a suffix is attached.

gurfè – “a room” --> gurfetʰo “his room”

Present Tense Verb Conjugation: Forms ʃâf-iʃûf and jâb-ijîb

Elihay, the author of the Speaking Arabic series, identifies 33 verb forms in Palestinian Arabic. (In Classical Arabic, there are traditionally 12 – in Elihay’s style of counting, there are 14 classical verb forms). We will learn the present tense of two simple forms in this lesson.
There are two moods used in the present tense. The simplest form is the jussive, which will presented first. Typically, the difference between the conjugation of the subjunctive and the indicative is the indicative prefix b-, while the jussive remains unmarked.

bᵉtSîri⁀tʃûfi⁀l-filim --> “she is starting to see the film”/”she is starting to watch the film”
rÂH ijîbʰo --> “he is going to bring it”/”he’ll bring it”

The purpose of the jussive is rather simple in Arabic. For now, it will suffice to say that a jussive verb is used when following a verb with a verb.

ʃâf-iʃûf “saw-see”

ʃâf-iʃûf is a verb whose simplest form (3rd person singular masculine past tense) is ʃâf, and whose simplest present tense form is iʃûf. In the present tense, verbs like these conjugate as such:

Jussive

Singular
1 – 2a-ʃûf
2 – ᵉt-ʃûf (masc.); ᵉt-ʃûf-i (fem)
3 – iʃûf (masc.); ᵉt-ʃûf (fem)
Plural
1 –ᵉn-ʃûf
2 – ᵉt-ʃûf-u
3 – i-ʃûf-u

Indicative

Singular
1 – ba-ʃûf
2 – bᵉt-ʃûf (masc.); bᵉt-ʃûf-i (fem)
3 – biʃûf (masc.); bᵉt-ʃûf (fem)
Plural
1 – mᵉn-ʃûf
2 – bᵉt-ʃûf-u
3 – bi-ʃûf-u

jâb-ijîb “brought-bring”

jâb is the 3rd person singular masculine past tense of “bring,” while ijîb is the 3rd person singular masculine present tense.
Note it conjugates virtually the same way as ʃâf-iʃûf in the present tense. As will be discussed later on in the course, they differ in some internal, vocalic morphology. This information is unimportant and irrelevant at this stage.

Jussive

Singular
1 – 2a-jîb
2 – ᵉt-jîb (masc.); ᵉt-jîb-i (fem)
3 – i-jîb (masc.); ᵉt-jîb (fem)
Plural
1 – ᵉn-jîb
2 – ᵉt-jîb-u
3 – i-jîb-u

Indicative

Singular
1 – ba-jîb
2 – bᵉt-jîb (masc.); bᵉt-jîb-i (fem)
3 – bijîb (masc.); bᵉt-jîb (fem)
Plural
1 – mᵉn-jîb
2 – bᵉt-jîb-u
3 – bi-jîb-u

Negation

There are a myriad of ways to negate verbs and sentences in Arabic, especially when you look across dialects.
We already came across one form of negation in the previous lesson: muʃ. muʃ is used to negate sentences without verbs, and comes before the predicate.

humme muʃ hôn – “they are not here”
hiyye muʃ ᵉqSîrè – “it’s not short”

In this lesson, we are going to introduce negation for verbs: ma + verb +-(ᵉ)ʃ. It is acceptable to drop the –(ᵉ)ʃ, but it isn’t common (though it is common for the past tense).

ma bᵉtrûHᵉʃ -- “you aren’t going”

Note that the –(ᵉ)ʃ suffix comes after the attachment of object pronouns.

ma baʃûfhâʃ -- “I don’t see her”

Notice how the open vowel at the end of the word becomes a long vowel when -ʃ is added.

Imperatives and Imperative Negation

The imperatives of Arabic verbs are very easy. The first step in making a verb imperative is to find the corresponding 2nd person present tense conjugation, then drop the prefix. In verbs like ʃâf-iʃûf and jâb-ijîb, the first consonants of the present tense stems are followed by vowels (ʃûf and jîb). Because this is perfectly pronounceable, we can stop here!

ᵉtʃûf --> ʃûf “look(, dude)!”
ᵉtʃûfi --> ʃûfi “look(, girl)!”
ᵉtʃûfu --> ʃûfu “look(, you guys)!”

In the case of negating imperatives, we need not even go that far. Instead, we simply negate the 2nd person present tense jussive.

ma tʃûfᵉʃ “don’t look(, dude)!”
ma tʃûfîʃ “don’t look(, girl)!”
ma tʃûfûʃ “don’t look(, you guys)!”

Yes / No

And finally: to say no, you simply say la2.
The most common way to say yes is 2A. You can also say aywA. na3am is formal, and is the best way to respond to someone who is trying to get your attention.

Exercises

Translate:
1) ʃûfiha, bintik!
2) yAllA, ᵉnrûH 3ind il-madrasè.
3) fi mASᵉr biqûlu “3ArAbiyyè,” bass iHna fi falasTîn mᵉnqûl “sayyÂrÀ”
4) fi falasTîn ma mᵉnrûHᵉʃ 2ila⁀l-madrasè fi 3ArAbiyyât.
5) lâken il-ᵉwlâd birûHu fi 3ArAbiyyâthom.
6) bASîr 2ajîbha 2ila⁀l-gurfè.
7) il-bint fi falasTîn bᵉtʃûf mASᵉr.
8) inte bᵉtʃûf mASᵉr?
9) bᵉtʃûfu irûHu fi⁀s-sayyÂrathom 3a TArîq il-madrasè.
10) jîbhâʃ 2ila emmak.
11) emmak muʃ zayy sittak, hiyye ᵉkbirè.
12) wênkom?
13) kîf HÂlak? TAyyeb. kîf HÂlik inti?
14) ana TAybè, w⁀iHna TAybîn.
15) intû, mînkom? u mîn humme?

Write ten or more sentences, using all the vocabulary in this lesson and the last. Try to use the concepts you learned in this lesson as well.

Conjugate all the verbs in this lesson, then go back through and translate.

Attach the possessive pronouns to each noun in this lesson and each noun in the previous lesson.

Answer the following questions, and provide an example. They are designed to make you think deeply about what you have learned, but you may not necessarily arrive upon the right answer.
1) Why does the indicative prefix become m- in the 1st person plural?
2) What similarities do you see between the pronouns and the verb affixes?

[kodé]

This is great! My grandparents and some of my extended family speak Levantine Arabic (they grew up in Lebanon and Syria). I'll be following these lessons, though quietly, since I'm super busy these days and I'm also learning Chinese.

A couple comments:

• It's interesting that 3ArAbiyyè means "wagon, cart, toy car" ... I though it meant "Arabic"
  Also interesting that Palestinian Arabic has no gender distinction for 2nd person plural
  Ah, so the 'b' is the indicative marker! I've always wondered what that 'b' is doing in front of verbs. Western Armenian similarly has an indicative prefix, while the subjunctive/jussive is marked by the absence of this prefix... I wonder if this is an areal feature
  I think you used the forms of ʃâf-iʃûf for the indicative of jâb-ijîb...

Shukran for the lessons!

[Io]

A couple comments:

• It's interesting that 3ArAbiyyè means "wagon, cart, toy car" ... I though it meant "Arabic"

This reminds me of and old blog entry of a fellow ZBBer http://phoenixblog.typepad.com/blog/200 ... baric.html

I talked to him back then to tell him than in Bougre there is a place name with a Turkish-Arabic loanword 'araba' meaning 'cart'.

[Yng]

Yeah, ʿarabiyye is a repurposing of a word for 'cart' which is as far as I can tell is entirely unrelated to its 'Arabic' sense. Another unrelated word from the same root is ʿarabūn 'down-payment'. In colloquial Levantine and Egyptian ʿarabi is used invariably for the language (often without the article) and ʿarabi/yye is used for 'Arab'.