Lower Intermediate - Washing the dishes

"Woman", like "man", can be used as a vocative, Mohamed. If you run a Google search you'll find "Get thee behind me, woman!" This is an allusion to "Get thee behind me, Satan" (Matthew 16:23).

Another example can be found in John 20:13: "Woman, why weepest thou?" And in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" we read "Woman! What do you mean?" Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely.

لماذا لم كتبت الكلمة "أرجُوك" في المفردات هذا درس؟
أنا لا أرفت هذه كلمة.

درس هذه كان جيد جدا!

شكرا كثيرا، كثالك

Ref Desmond's comments on "woman!", I think it is fair to say that most women would find this pretty rude unless used jokingly by a close friend...

I agree, Maasbar. Both "man" and "woman" are used as vocatives, but "woman" sounds somewhat ruder than "man".

The vocative "man" doesn't sound very polite either, and the same goes for "boy".

Literal translations of Arabic vocatives can give rise to serious misunderstandings. Vocatives which sound neutral or friendly in Arabic may sound very unfriendly when they are rendered literally in English.

I recently found an Arabic video where an old woman addresses a small boy as "yaa ghulaam" (The word is also used in the podcast entitled "Three questions"). The old woman sounded very friendly. In English, however, "boy" would sound unfriendly and arrogant. At British schools teachers sometimes use "boy" when addressing pupils, and this invariably sounds unfriendly.

Can you please explain why, in the last line, الصحون is not in جر status (الصحين) since it's following "من"?

Hafs, (صحون) is not (جمع مذكر سالم) which I guess you know what that means. The letters (و) and (ن) are parts of the word and not a suffix to indicate plural.
Hope you got it now .

ohh ok, makes sense! keep up the great work :)

great lesson ehab and mohammad. you guys should do a lesson on all the revolutionary people protests that are happening in the middle east these days so we can better understand the news!

@ aanandk

I agree, aanandk. The Middle East is in turmoil. We have arrived at an historic turning point. The events we are witnessing now are reminiscent of the fall of the Iron Curtain. In order to understand Arabic news bulletins we need to know the Arabic equivalents of words and expressions like "tear gas", "water cannon", "arrest", "demonstrator", "resignation", "unemployment", "corruption" and "social injustice".

and we also need the word for "TO LYNCH" an american word from the wild west