Beginner - Levantine: You get the gift

I’m rather puzzled by the way in which volition is expressed in Lebanese Arabic. What does ﺒﺪﻚ really mean? It doesn’t look like a verb. Is it a noun with a pronominal suffix?

I’ve looked up ﺒﺪ in the Lessan dictionaries. It isn’t in the English or German dictionaries, but it has been recorded in the Spanish dictionary, where it is rendered as “salida” (= exit, way out). There’s no connection between the notions associated with exits and volition, so I’m probably on the wrong track.

The idea of volition is expressed several times in the dialogue presented in this podcast, but there are only two sentences in which there is a shadda above the letter ﺪ. Why isn’t there a shadda above this letter in ﺒﺪﻱ?

Hi Desmond, بدك in Levantine is very similar in form to عندي which, as you know, exists in both standard and dialect. We've been referring to عندي as a verb, because it translates (most of the time) as "I have" in English but it's actually more like a preposition. We're actually about to record another lesson in which we go over another meaning that is more similar to "at me."

So بدك operates in a very similar way. That's a good point about the dual (or rather dueling) meanings. I'm actually not sure if the بدّ in Levantine is derived from the same word in standard, but I will look into it and get back to you.

As to the lack of a شدة well, I'm afraid no mystery there, it's just a typo - sorry about that!

Okay, here's answers to your two questions, Desmond, courtesy of AUB instructor and linguist David Wilmsen:

(1) بدّي comes from ودّ which means "to like or love." Apparently, some Gulf dialects retain the و in their everyday usage.

(2) قاعدة can mean seat and it correspondents with a crude/elevated English term for toilet seat: "throne."

Thank you for all the extra information, Sierra. Your comment on ﻗﺎﻋﺪﺓ confirms what I found on another website. Incidentally, I’ve never considered “throne” (= lavatory seat and bowl) as a crude word. I would have labelled it “humorous”, “colloquial” or even “dated”. The example cited in the “Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang” dates from 1941 and sounds almost literary. My grandparents, whose English was normally genteel and sometimes very antiquated, used “throne” as a humorous euphemism, and “throne” as a synonym of “lavatory bowl” seems to have disappeared from the language of the younger generation.

Don’t worry about the typo! Everybody makes mistakes.

Words like ﻋﻨﺪﻱ bothered me a lot when I started to teach myself Arabic in December 2008, and several weeks elapsed before I discovered the true nature of such items while perusing a quaint but fascinating book about Arabic that was published over a hundred years ago. The fact that ﻋﻨﺪ can mean “at” doesn’t surprise me. Last year I discovered a short narrative text entitled “'and (ﻋﻨﺪ) a(l)-tabiib (ﺍﻠﻄﺒﻴﺐ)”, which evidently means “at the doctor’s”.

I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean by “dual meanings”. I didn’t use the word “dual” in my question. Do you mean “polysemy”?

I already knew the verb ﻮﺪّ, and I knew it could mean “like” or “want”, but I had no idea that it was related to forms like ﺒﺪﻲ. Does that mean that ﺒﺪﻚ really is a verb form after all? I was almost certain that it was a noun or a preposition with a pronominal suffix, and the comment you posted at 4.40 pm seems to confirm this hypothesis.

You say that “some Gulf dialects retain the ﻮ in their everyday usage”. That implies that in other dialects the ﻮ is omitted, but if it is omitted from ﻮﺪّ practically nothing remains. Isn’t that very odd? Perhaps you mean that ﻮ is replaced by another letter?

Hi Desmond, that's a good point about throne. It's a euphemism for toilet if anything.

Sorry for the confusion - by "dual" I just meant your reference to exit vs. volition.

It seems like the stem of بدّي is derived from the verb ودّ and I suppose it's not so strange for the و to disappear. The و often disappears in more complex forms of verbs that have it as a root - like وصل which takes a form VIII of اتصل. Also, وَزَرَ (to carry a burden) takes a delightful VIII form of اتزر, delightful because it can mean "to wear a loincloth."

In Levantine dialects, the ب often simply replaces the أ at the front of the word and even, in speech, the ي at the front of third-person masculine singular forms, so it's not so surprising that it might have, in this case, replaced the و.

That said, بدّي IS conjugated more like عندي, which is not a normal verb conjugation. Similarly, في is purely a preposition in standard, but takes on a verbal meaning in Levantine and is conjugated, again, like عندي.

Great podcast!I know the next poem I write in Arabic will be talking about gifts. I just liked the interactiveness in this. I'm now learning this in university. I just wrote a poem and I couldn't find IS in the books I had. What is "is" in Arabic?

Hi cat_lover7489. In the present tense, "is" in Arabic is usually implied. It appears in the past tense as the verb كانَ. Look it up in a root dictionary under ك-و-ن. Hope that helps! Thanks for writing ;-)

Thank you Sierra. I'm trying to immerse myself in the language by these podcasts, my classes at university and practicing with Arabic speakers. It's a slow process with many questions. So, if "is" is implied in Arabic, would the past tense "was" be implied too?

Dear Sierra,

Thank you for your very detailed explanations. The euphemistic use of “throne” is quite interesting. Did you know that the French noun “trône” can be used in exactly the same way? There is a good example in one of Sartre’s short stories (“L’enfance d’un chef”): “Alors il fit machinalement tomber son pantalon et s’assit sur le trône en grelottant.”

Do native speakers of Arabic make jokes about the noun ﻗﺎﻋﺪﺓ? I’m sure it could be used in all sorts of scatological puns.

If you know any really good Arabic jokes you should include them in your podcasts. Jokes can be used very effectively in language teaching.

The problems associated with the verb ﻮﺪّ are so complex that an entire podcast might be devoted to this lexical item. You could list all its standard past and present tense forms and then show what happens when the initial letter is replaced by a ﺐ. All the verb forms could then be used in a dialogue (or perhaps two dialogues – one in standard Arabic and one in the Lebanese dialect).

I think that would be of interest to many other listeners since the verb in question is very common. When I started to teach myself Arabic I listened to dozens of Arabic videos on YouTube, and after a few days I discovered music videos where Haifa Wehbe uses forms like ﺒﺪﻲ. I analysed the texts carefully and managed to work out dozens of grammatical rules on my own, but I was completely baffled by many of the words I found in Wehbe’s songs.

Forms like ﻋﻨﺪﻱ also pose very intricate problems. If you say that such forms are “conjugated” you’ll only confuse listeners. Beginners will think that ﻋﻨﺪﻱ is a verb form. Then they’ll ask you all sorts of questions like “Why doesn’t the third person singular begin with the same letter as ﻴﺴﻌﻝ (he coughs)?”, “What is the imperative of this verb?”, “Can I use this verb to translate ‘Have a cup of tea!’”, “Can I use the suffix ﺴ to form the future tense?” You’ll have to spend hours answering all these questions.

Misunderstandings can be avoided if word forms are labelled correctly from the outset. If you explain that ﻋﻨﺪﻱ is a preposition with a suffix everything will be much clearer and fewer questions will be asked.

It may not be amiss to add a brief comment on the verbs “decline”, “conjugate” and “inflect”. Nouns, pronouns and adjectives are declined, verbs are conjugated, and the verb “inflect” can be used for word forms that don’t fit into any of these categories.

I have never asserted or implied that technical terms are more important than the linguistic phenomena they designate. The use of technical terms is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The correct use of technical terms is conducive to clarity and precision; the incorrect use of such terms creates confusion, and the complete avoidance of all linguistic terminology creates a mental void.

Does anyone know of a resource I can use that will give me the complete list of conjugations to any Arabic verb? I was thinking a book, with like 500 Arabic verbs, each page having 1 infinitive verb and all of its conjugations listed below. If anyone knows of something like this, can you let me know thanks.