Beginner - Your details

i have a question that is irrelivant to this lesson but i think is very important. It is this. if i want to talk about "it". how do i do this if i am not sure if the subject i am speaking about is feminin or masculine. for example , if i wanted to say "i want it" and i am referring to a chair. I know the arabic word for chair but as a non native speaker dont know its sexuality, whatcan i say, should i just use the masculine form if i dont know? will it be understood? and also if i am using "it" at the beginning of the sentence, is there a distinction between masculine and feminine or is it just "da". for example how would i say "it is brown", referring to the chair. shokrun and these lessons are wonderful, helping me adapt to my new home in egypt quite well :):)

i also have another question regarding refering to "you" . you said that "k" at the end refers to you. is this the ownership you as in "your name" or can it be used as just you like "i love you". when it is added to a verb does it refer to you and when it is added to an obect does it refer to ownership of such object? how would you say "it is yours" thanks again. this is all very helpful

If you don't know the gender (male or female) for an object, use the masculine form for it. However, it is not that hard to specify the gender of the objects in Arabic. In general, if a word ends with (ah) sound, then it is most likely to be feminine, like seyyaarah (car), mazra3ah (farm)... Words that end with other letters, like "chair" which is (kursy) are masculine, so we say (haad'a kursy - this is kursy).
Regarding to "da" which is the Egyptian way of saying (this),, with masculine words use "da" and for feminine words use "de", so your example "this is brown" will be (da bonny).
Hope that is clear enough.

How have you been, teacher?
Got a minute?
Would you write me how to read 1990 in Arabic again?

آهلاٌٌ و سهلاٌٌ

Just wanted to mention that I was reading over the transcript for this lesson just now and I noticed that in the first line we see: إسمك الكامل لو سحمت

but I think it should be: إسمك الكامل لو سمحت

Anyway, as always, thank you guys sooooo much for Arabicpod! It is wonderful. Keep up the great work.

مع السلامة

Opps,, you are right Rdewey.. We will correct it soon. Thanks for notifying us.
تحياتي