أنَا بَاحِب العَرَبِي [I love Arabic]

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After we learned about verbs in the previous lessons, it's now time to learn about nouns, and phrase structure.

There are two possible genders for nouns in Egyptian: masculine and feminine. Some words' genders can be easily guessed, for example, any noun ending with -t> is feminine. However, generally words should be memorized with their gender and plural form. Here're some nouns with their genders:
qoTat> - Cat (f.)
kalb - Dog (m.)
shams - Sun (f.)
qamar - Moon (m.)

After this quick glance over the nouns, we focus more on phrase structure. There are two types of phrases in Arabic, Noun Phrase and Verbal Phrase.

The pattern of the noun phrase is:
[Starting] [Information]
Noun phrase is the one which starts with a Noun or a Pronoun. The Noun or Pronoun starting the phrase is called "The Starting" "al mobtada'", it represents the entity (person, animal or ... ) about which the phrase is talking. "al mobtada'" is followed by "Information" "alkhabar". "alkhabar" is the part of the phrase telling information about "almobtada'", "al khabar" can be:
1- A noun, adjective or prepostional phrase. examples:
- anaa aHmad I'm Ahmad.
- albeet kebeer The house is big.
- howwa fee albeet He is in the house.
Note : These examples explain why the verb "to be" is not used in Egyptian in the way English uses it. The position of nouns/adjectives/prepositional phrase shown in examples (Ahmad, kebeer, ... etc) is [Information] "al khabar", so they are understood to tell information about [the starting] with no need to insert the verb "to be" in the present tense.
2- A verbal phrase without the subject (see next paragraph for info about verbal phrase), example:
- anaa baaqra' alketaab I read the book.

Verbal phrase is the one which starts with a verb (in any of the three forms). It is considered stronger than a noun phrase composition-wise. The pattern of the verbal phrase is:
[verb] [optional subject] [optional object]
The order is not that strict though with subject and object, in some instances, object comes first ... it really depends on the logic of the phrase, this will be clear in the following examples:
- Here all elements of the verbal phrase are present and in usual order. fehem alTaaleb aldars The student understood the lesson.
- Here, the subject is omitted because it's logically understood to be "I" baafham al3arabee I understand Arabic.
- Here, the object is omitted simply because the verb does not require an object. kharaget salmE men albeet Salma went out of the house.

As a simple exercise
1- Try to form the following phrases in Arabic:
- I am Egyptian(or your nationality, consult the dictionary;).
- I listen to the Radio.
- He is in the house.
2- Translate the following phrases to your language:

anaa baaHeb al3arabee.
kharag alwalad men almadrasat>a
albent betaakol altofaaH.

Transliteration Please

Salaam, First of all Jazak Allahu Khairun for this site. I like it a lot. But I am lost in this lesson and agree with the first comment that reading/writing Arabic is a bridge too far...and I know you mentioned that transliteration is there if we roll our mouse on the Arabic text, but I think having it right below Arabic (as in previous lessons) is much more beneficial. And I have same comment for exercises, doing them in Arabic script is just time consuming when we just want to learn to be able to communicate verbally. But again shokran gazeelan for making verbs look so easy in previous lessons Smiling

pronounciation

dear people, why have you stopped giving the pronounciation in english next to the arabic writing? i want to speak egyptian, writing arabic is a bridge too far for me... thanks though for the lessons so far!

Dear studnet, when you put

Dear studnet, when you put the mouse over the arabic text for a second, a message like : "click here to play [transliterated arabic text]" will show up, if you then click the text, you can listen to the pronounciation (but this feature is still under development). would you suggest a more convenient interface? you suggestions are welcome. Mohamed

how do you say tabouret in egyption

how

"tabouret" is also a chair,

"tabouret" is also a chair, so it is korsee. review lesson 2

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