Beginner - Levantine: Back by midnight

Thank you for the excellent lesson! Lot's to learn here. I have a couple of questions regarding conjugation rules in Levantine Arabic. For "can I" you have فيي. What about "you can" or the past tense "you/I could"? Likewise for "روح". What is "I go" and "I/you went"? Thanks for your advice!

Thanks for yet another useful podcast.

Let me share the little I know. نصف (= half), منتصف (= center, middle) and تنصيف (=bisection, halving) have the same root - ن ص ف .

منتصف الليل is midnight and منتصف النهار is midday or noon.

Thanks for the great questions, hexagonmoon. You can in Levantine is فيك - that's feek for a man and feeky for a woman. Here's the full conjugation list:

فيي - I can
فيك - you can (m)
فيكِ - you can (f)
فيه - he can
فيها - she can
فينا - we can
فيكن - you (all) can
فيهن - they can

To put any of these in the past, you just add the verb كان before it, as in: كان فينا = we could.

The verb روح, however, is a little different. I go is بروح - remember to add that ب to mark it as present - and "I went" is conjugated like a normal verb, that is a normal "hollow verb" or one with an أ as the center letter: رحت

Here's that conjugation as well:
رحت = I went
رحت = you went (m)
رحتي = you went (f)
راح = he went
راحت = she went
رحنا = we went
رحتو = you (all) went
راحوا = they went

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Very good, Vinod. You're absolutely right about the ن-ص-ف root.

Just one small correction. You can say منتصف الليل and منتصف النهار to mean "the middle of the night/day" but they don't literally mean "midnight" and "noon."

In Levantine, we'd be more likely to say الساعة اطنعش بالليل to mean midnight - that's "12 at night" - and there's actually a word for noon - الضهر. It's quite similar to the standard version, which is: الظهر.

Hope that helps. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

@sierraprasada

Thanks a lot for the encouraging comment, and for pointing out the correction.

Wishing you and others at Arabicpod all the best, and looking forward for further podcasts.

thanks

Useful lesson as always - but Beginner? I feel like this could almost be at a higher level, or at least explain or go over some of the words/grammatical things at least once. For instance, is the verb يخلص (as in a film ending or finishing) Standard or just colloquial, or does it have a slightly different connotation in one or the other like a lot of verbs? (Presumably it's related to the exclamation !خلاص). Also maybe there could have been a review of how the ب in front of the verb works, since there was no mention of it - it was just assumed to be known already. The note on في and its conjugation is in the comments section and was very helpful, but if it wasn't there I wouldn't have any idea how it worked. I personally know how these examples work, but if I can make a suggestion, perhaps things like this could be reviewed and explained better in a Beginner lesson. Thanks for the great lessons!

Thanks a lot lot lot