Lower Intermediate - Guess the time

What is the difference between لازم and يجب?

لازم literally means ‘necessary’ and يجب means ‘must’ but they both can be used interchangeably. However, لازم is used more in colloquial dialects, and often the connecting أن is omitted when there is a verb following لازم .

guess some error slipped in : the hour is 3.30 pm and not 2.30 -
the last phrase translation is kind of strange as it talks about an appointment no ? if yes how do you get to "be back on time" ?
cheers

Ahlan plop,

موعد Maw3ed can mean ‘appointment’ and it can mean ‘time’ depending on the context. Often if موعد is defined, as in الموعد, and is preceded by في or على which means ‘in’ or ‘on’ respectively then the word means time.

For example:

عندي موعد بعد ساعة
3endy maw3ed ba3ad saa3ah
I have an appointment after an hour

كن على الموعد
Kun 3alaa almaw3ed
Be on time

عدم حضورك في الموعد المحدد أدى إلى...
3adam 7u9’oorak fy almaw3ed almu7adad addaa elaa...
You not arriving on time led to...

لم يعطي موعد محدد
Lam yu36y maw3ed mu7adad
He didn’t give a specific time

Dear Mohamed,

You can't say "I have an appointment after an hour". You have to say "I have an appoinment in an hour." If it were now four o'clock and I wanted to meet you at five o'clock, I'd say "I'll meet you in an hour" (not "after an hour").

"After an hour" is normally used with a past tense verb. Example: "We went to the factory shortly before midnight and waited behind some bushes. After an hour two masked men arrived with a ladder and a toolbox."

If you always translate "ba'd" as "after" your English sentences will be grammatically incorrect. You have to consider the tense of the verb and the overall meaning of the sentence.

Incidentally, "in an hour" can have two meanings in English. It can mean "within an hour" or "when an hour has elapsed". In French you have to use two different prepositions. "Dans une heure" means "when an hour has elapsed" and "en une heure" means "within an hour". This will be of interest to Plop, who is a native speaker of French.

The French translation of your first Arabic example sentence would be: "J'ai un rendez-vous dans une heure". If I wanted to say "He did his work in one hour" I would have to use another preposition and say "Il a effectué son travail en une heure".

can we in the last sentence for: get back on time say
"narje3 alalwaqt" istead of "fy almwa3ed".

Hi Desmond, thanks for the correction. I sometimes make the mistake of translating Arabic directly to English even though the sentence might not sound grammatically correct.

Quest, yes you can also say “Narje3 3ala alwaqt”, well done!

Dear Mohamed,

It might be useful to put together an Arabic crime story containing the typical Arabic equivalents of "in an hour" and "after an hour". The text would constitute an intermediate lesson about a burglary. It might even be split up into two episodes (two complementary podcasts). Ehab would probably enjoy writing that sort of thing.

Here's the plot. The police have received a tip-off from an informer. One policeman might ring up his colleague and say: "I'll meet you in an hour." Shortly before midnight the two policeman go off to a state-owned factory and hide behind some bushes. After a hour two criminals arrive with a ladder and a toolbox and try to get into the factory in order to steal a computer containing top-secret files.

That would be quite an interesting story. There'd be a lot of useful words and phrases, and you could highlight the various forms of past and present tense verbs as well as the differences between Arabic adverbial phrases and their English equivalents. Grammar needn't be boring.

"In an hour" in the sense of "within an hour" could be dealt with in another lesson. A typical sentence would be "He managed to finish the work in an hour". Here the past tense verb makes the meaning perfectly clear.

In this domain English is much simpler than French. "In an hour" is "dans une heure" or "en une heure", depending on the context, and "after an hour" (with a past tense verb) is "au bout d'une heure".

Desmond, you're a star. Thanks for the idea, it sounds like it'll make a good and fun AP lesson :)

thanks for the clarification - and very interesting discussion -

Salam and Jazaka-Allah Khair for answering my question Ustaad Moshaya. I really look forward to these lessons. May Allah reward you and Ustaad Saleh for your efforts.

Dear Mohamed,

I’m glad you like my idea. At the moment I’m puzzling over a very difficult Arabic text. It contains some words I can’t find in any of the online dictionaries or glossaries I normally use. One of the words is ﻗﻢ. This is the name of a city in Iran, but it must mean something different when it is preceded by “Netlog” and followed by ﺒﺰﻴﺎﺮﺓ. Since ﺰﻴﺎﺮﺓ means “visit”, I suspect that this is an invitation to visit somebody’s home page.

The word ﻜﺼﺪﻴﻖ is also giving me trouble. It appears after a person’s name and can be found in innumerable texts on the Net. Have you any idea what these two lexical items might mean?

we say detective story....hope this helps.