Posts
Archive for March, 2008
Negating With Maa and Laa
Saturday, March 29th, 2008In Arabic, you can negate sentences with maa and laa. Maa, you can use to negate the past (eg. I didn’t eat), or the present (eg. I’m not eating right now). Laa, you can use to negate the present (eg. I don’t drink tea)–and you CAN negate the past tense, if you repeat the laa–as Allah says in Suratil Qiyaama: falaa saddaqa wa laa salla!
Some Arabic Patterns
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008Arabic has a very distinct quality to it–while at first, it appears to be complex and difficult, that complexity is removed by use of patterns. Almost everything in Arabic follows patterns–and if you know how to spot the patterns, you can get an idea of what the word means, even if you don’t understand everything. We discuss a few patterns–doers, places, verbs, things like that.
Spot the Fa’il
Saturday, March 15th, 2008What is the fa’il? The word fa’il (فاعِل) means doer, the one who does the action. It is the person doing the action. It is always definite, marfoo’, and it comes after the verb. But sometimes, you can construct a sentence (incorrectly) which has a double fa’il–if you have a verbal sentence where the verb has the fa’il (like thahabuw) and you add people to it, you can create a grammatically-incorrect sentence with two fa’ils!
Comparative and Superlative
Saturday, March 8th, 2008Ism Tafdiyl is the comparative/superlative–in English, things like “smarter” and “smartest.” Both take the pattern of af’alu. The comparative takes min (sometimes a hidden min), while the superlative takes a mudaf ilayh. Read some examples, it helps clarify.
The Fa’il in Maadi
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008In Arabic grammar, the fa’il can be a clear noun, pronoun, or even something attached at the end of a verb conjugation! In this post, we discuss the fa’il in a maadi (past-tense) verb, and point out the fa’il. In the past-tense, all conjugations except for the third-person singulars (he and she) have a fa’il.