16 Comments
If you're hearing an "-un" on the end of "dajaaj" and "baarid", know that it's a grammatical ending that means the noun is indefinite, like "a chicken/some chicken" versus "the chicken" (and it's also on "cold" to agree with "chicken" - Arabic adjectives have agreement like Spanish and French ones). It's often not written, but then it's often not said either; it's also correct to say "dajaaj baarid 3aadii"
73
So that is a 3 in 3aadii ? I was trying figure that out before or was it a mistake. Can you explain that also. Please /Thank you .
When Arabic is transliterated into English, the letter ayn (ع) is represented by 3. It doesn't have an equivalent English letter
- 73
Thank you . That wasn’t even in the “tips” section . Wish they would of warned me about that before getting hit with it .
Is that typical in teaching Arabic to reproduce ˁayin as a 3? ˁayin is a common Semitic consonant, e.g., Hebrew ע, Syriac ܥ, and it is always represented by the siglum ˁ (so Hebrew, all Aramaic dialects, Syriac). The paperback Arabic grammar by A. S. Tritton (Arabic [Teach Yourself Books, 1943]) represents ˁayin with the symbol ˁ. However, there clearly is a difficulty in representing that letter because J. R. Smart's Arabic: A Complete Guide for Beginners (Teach Yourself Books, 1992) uses a colon. I find the colon to be as odd as the number 3. I'm guessing that 3 was chosen because the isolated ˁayin kind of looks like a backwards 3. My other takeaway is that the siglum ˁ is academic whereas DL deliberately attempts to tone down academic jargon. I'm fine with the latter decision; however, IMO since ˁayin is a common Semitic letter it would help to have some continuity with the way the wider learning community represents that letter. (Tritton was emeritus professor of Arabic at the University of London.)
why weren't these words covered individually with pictures, like other courses, before being presented as full phrases?
Thank you to everyone who has explained this sentence in more detail. I am an absolute beginner and I'm incredibly confused as to why there has been a huge jump from basic sounds to full phrases that haven't been adequately taught yet. Finding this a bit tricky!!
Hello there, is the order of these words correct? If you read from right to left, it is "chicken cold regular." Are the words put in this order for teaching purposes, or is this something about the order of the Arabic language and placing adjectives after the noun? Thank you!
good question, these lessons jumped right from tons of pronunciation drills to full adjective descriptions without even having the picture matching or adjective explanations or anything like that, which other lessons tend to give
in MSA Arabic (which this is, but it's never explicitly explained) the noun comes first (on the right) followed by one or more adjectives that describe it
