Beginner - You look confused

nice lesson, you never blight our expectations!
could you let's know the root of the verb حائر ?
can it be used to explain a human feeling or a phone conversation as well ?

The word ﺁﺨﺭ is rather odd in several respects:

1) Unlike its English equivalent (“last”), it functions like an ordinal numeral.

2) Although it is essentially an adjective, it precedes the noun it modifies, as the first term of an 'idaafa structure (cf. the podcast entitled “My weekly schedule”).

3) Even if the following noun is feminine, the masculine form of ﺁﺨﺭ is used (cf. the podcast entitled “Messy hair”).

4) There is no article between ﺁﺨﺭ and the noun it modifies.

Considered from an orthographical viewpoint, ﺁﺨﺭ is equally worthy of interest since the initial letter is a “harf madd” or “letter of prolongation” (cf. A. F. L. Beeston, “A Matter of Length”, in Journal of Semitic Studies XXXIV/2, Autumn 1989: 347-354). Letters of prolongation (alif, waw and ya'), which are known in German as “Dehnungsbuchstaben” or “Vokalbuchstaben” and in Latin as “matres lectiones”, are one of the peculiarities of the Arabic writing system (cf. S. F. G. Wahl, Elementarbuch für die arabische Sprache und Litteratur (Halle 1789): 69). In early editions of the Qur’an red alifs are used as matres lectionis. In the Ottoman Empire the red alifs were replaced by normal alifs, and in the 1924 Cairo edition of the Qur’an over 5,000 normal alifs were in turn replaced by superscripts.

I have often shared the confusion over اخر and, in addition to the above comments, I have another question. What is the relationship between اخر and اخرة, which appears to be the feminine form and yet has a different meaning? اخر مرة = last time, but مرة اخرة = once again, or another time... ??

I think I can offer a couple of clues, hexagonmoon.

ﺁﺨﺭ can be spelt with with a kasra or a fatha. If there is a kasra below the second letter, ﺁﺨﺭ means “last”. If there is a fatha above the second letter it means “another”, “different” or “else”. If the diacritics are removed the two words in question look like identical twins.

There is an interesting example in the podcast entitled “Where’s the pizza?” “Shay' 'aakher” means “something else”. “'Aakher is placed after “shay'” because it is a normal adjective.

I've just relistened to "you look confused" and "Where's the pizza?" I can't detect any difference in pronunciation between "'aakher" (= last) and "'aakher" (= different). This means that the two words in question are both homographs and homophones when the diacritics are removed. I wonder if Ehab will confirm my hypotheses.

Well, I think the word (aa7'er آخِر) in this lesson is clear as the dialogue is short and can be spotted easily.
However, I am not sure what word we are referring to in lesson (Where is the Pizza?), the only place where it comes as (aa7'ar آخَر) is in the sentence (لو علمنا أنه سيتأخر لطلبنا شئ
آخر) where (aa7'ar) here means (another/different).
By the way, the root of (حائر) is (حار),just like when we say (طائر) comes from (طار).

Ok, so now I'm left wondering: Are اخر meaning "another" and اخر meaning "last" different words? Or the same word with context dependent meaning?

I think we are here concerned with two different words. If you look them up in the Lessan dictionaries you'll find several entries, and if you look closely at the Arabic equivalents of "last" and "different" you'll notice a slight difference in spelling. One word is spelt with a kasra, while the other one has a fatha.

This is rather like the problem posed by "rajul" (man) and "rijl" (leg / foot). When diacritic marks are removed, the two words look identical. The identification problem posed by "rajul" /"rijl" is, of course, somewhat less thorny that that posed by "'aakher" because "rajul" and "rijl" are not pronounced the same way.

I'll just add four further remarks which might prove helpful:

First, the word "'aakher" only occurs once in the text presented in "Where's the pizza?", and I would agree with Ehab when he says that the meaning is perfectly clear.

Second, the podcast entitled "Where's the pizza?" ends with a brief exchange between Ehab and Mohamed, and at the end of this dialogue Ehab says "su'aal 'aakher", which presumably means "another question".

Third, there are homographs and homophones in every language, and sometimes even experienced linguists have difficulty in deciding whether they are concerned one word or with two.

Fourth, the number of homographs and homophones varies considerably from language to language. They are extremely frequent in Arabic in French, but comparatively rare in English. Typical English examples are "row" (line), "row" (altercation) and "row" (propel a boat by means of oars).

الن و اسان

Where can I obtain an Arabic supported keyboard?

I hope the (kasra) is clear in the word (آخِر) in my comment above, or at least we can notice the letter before the end of the words (aa7'er - aa7'ar) where one has (e) before the (r) and the other has (a).

To summarise it again:
Aa7'er آخِر means last
Aa7'ar آخَر means another

I checked (Where's the pizza) lesson and spotted the time where I told Moshaya (سؤال آخَر) and I can hear it as (so2aal aa7'ar).

b.muse01, أهلا بك, if you click on (Show Arabic Keyboard) just above the text box that you normally write the comment in (bottom of this page), then a keyboard would appear and you'll be able to write in Arabic alphabet.

Thanks for going to so much trouble, Ehab. I think this discussion has been very useful.

The most interesting sentence is the dialogue is the last one. Here we have an excellent example of a proleptic construction. The direct object of the verb is placed at the beginning of the sentence and subsequently repeated in the form of a pronominal suffix (ﻬﺎ). This syntactic device is very expressive. It throws the direct object into sharp relief and conveys the impression that under the stress of emotion utterance has begun before the speaker has clearly surveyed the whole field of the thought to which he wishes to give expression.

Prolepsis was often used in ancient Greek (e.g. in Euripides’ “Medea”). In modern French this type of syntactic dislocation is equally common in everyday speech and in sophisticated literary discourse. In the “Contes choisis” of Pierre Louÿs, for instance, we find the following sentence: “La mort, Néphélis l’eût acceptée en cet instant.” The direct object of the verb “accepter” is “la mort”. “La mort” is placed at the beginning of the sentence just like the noun phrase ﺍﻠﻌﺒﺎﺭﺓ in Ehab’s sentence, then it is replaced by a pronoun (l’).

It would be quite easy to translate Ehab’s sentence into French, but it is rather difficult to find a good English equivalent because prolepsis is much less common in English than in French. True, the English can say things like “That man, I’ve just seen him again”, but a literal translation of the final sentence in the podcast would sound distinctly un-English. I would suggest the following translation: “It’s the whole phrase that’s bothering me. I can’t make head or tail of it.”

I wonder how Arabic grammarians would classify Ehab’s sentence. It certainly isn’t a “jumla fi’liyya” (verbal sentence) because it doesn’t begin with a verb. But is it a “jumla ismiyya” (nominal sentence)? The noun at the beginning of a “jumla ismiyya” is normally the subject of the sentence, and in the case under discussion the initial noun phrase is the direct object of a verb.

dam son! thats G yo!

dam son! thats G yo!

I was wondering how to modify the word شكلك. Is it correct to say شكلي for "I look" or شكنا for "we look"? And are there other ways t say this expression?

I love this podcast by the way - every lesson has been incredibly helpful to me. I feel fortunate to have come across it - thanks so much for making this Mohammed and Ehab - keep it up!

Dear Paul,

I think you’ve confused two nouns:
ﺸﻜﻞ: appearance
ﺸﻚ: doubt

Unless I’m greatly mistaken, your first word means “my appearance”, while your second one means “our doubt”. If you want to say “our appearance” you’ll have to insert a letter before the suffix.

Thanks Desmond for answering Paul. I guess he missed the (ل) by mistake, so it is probably a typo, and the correct way of saying (our appearance/look) is (شكلنا).

As for the issue of the last sentence. It is nominal sentence, where the mubtada2 is (al3ebaarah) and the 7'abar is the verbal sentence (maa fahemtuhaa). This type of nominal sentence is very common, try to have a go with the lesson titled (Sentence structure), it is an intermediate lesson, you can find it by searching for the word (structure) in our Lessons page.

Thanks for your comment, Ehab. I've already listened to your podcast about nominal and verbal sentences, and I've found a lot of information about these syntactic structures on the Net. Most of the grammarians who deal with this topic cite very simple example sentences, and the sentences in your podcasts are often very complex.

By the way, have you seen the new glossary of "Egyptian Arabic Insults and Crude Language"? It includes the expression "tuz fiik" and will no doubt be of great interest to the Arabicpod community.

آخِر يعني last or final as ordinal number, hence آخِرة تعني the resurrection day

If I wanted to ask 'what part of the phrase confused you' in proper (classical) Arabic, would it be:

* Maadha ma fahimt menhaa?

Or

* Maa ma fahimt menhaa?

I'm guessing the first one as the second one with two maas sounds a bit funny...

Well, the way it is said in classical Arabic is:
maa allad'y lam tafhamhu minhaa ما الذي لم تفهمه منها
The literatel translation is: What is it you didn't understand from it?
Notice that lam tafham gives a past tense meaning although tafham is a present tense verb.
Hope that helps.

Ah, K. Thanks Ehab!