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Amma and Fa
By ArabicTree | December 15, 2007
Imagine you’re talking about a group of things–your brothers, leaves on trees, your neighbour’s dogs–and you need to mention similarities between them, but also differences.
Let’s concrete-ify. Say you’re introducing two of your friends to someone. Both are your friends; one is a teacher, and one is a doctor. What kind of sentence would you construct in Arabic?
Enter amma (أمَّا) and fa (فَ). You can use amma to single one out, then fa to explain something about them. Like this:
Translation: This is ‘Uthmaan, and this is Muhammad. As for ‘Uthmaan, then he is n engineer. And as for Muhammad, then he is a doctor.
You can see how amma allows you to distinguish or talk about individuals (or sub groups) when you’ve talked about a main group. And don’t be tricked–even though we translated fa as “then,” it’s not the same as ثُمَّ; there’s no indication of passing time. Fa distinguishes that this is the consequence of the person/group you brought attention to with amma. You can also translate fa as “thus,” “therefore,” and so on.
Topics: Beginner, Grammar | 5 Comments »
December 15th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
An excellent post on أما + فـ . Just one small query. I think you might have made a typo with عثمان (’Uthman)- you wrote it with an أ instead of an ع .
January 7th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Jazakumullahu khayran, you’re absolutely right; it’s been fixed alhamdulillah.
February 6th, 2009 at 10:04 am
I am learning Arabic and you can’t imagine how helpful your website helps me.
Thank you so much!
February 14th, 2009 at 9:46 am
The translation for the example should be Uthman “then he is an engineer” not a teacher.
Very helpful notes! maa shaa Allah.
August 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
@tayybah jazakumullahu khayran, fixed.