Lower Intermediate - Dissatisfied hotel guest

كان هذا درس مناسب جداً لي، لأنّ سأسافر إلى الشرق الأوست يوم الجمع، وأنا سأبقي في فندق. أتمن أن لن أكون في نفس الحال من هذه مناقشة.

Anyway, very useful little dialog. Several new words + phrases that are new for me. I'm heading for Dubai, so I'm not sure if the hotel staff will speak Arabic or not. We shall see.

Ahlan Jenkki,

I really hope your hotel in Dubai would be in better conditions than the one we had in the lesson.
Very quick correction of your Arabic text:

كان هذا الدرس مناسب جداً لي، لأنّي سأسافر إلى الشرق الأوسط يوم الجمعة، وأنا سأبقى في فندق. أتمنى أن لا أكون في نفس حال هذا الدرس.

شكراً يا صديقي!

Can you clarify why you use "لا أكون" instead of "لن أكون"... is it because of the particle "أن"?

Very nice to see some different words to use for "I want" in place of "oreed." And, very funny.

أنا الآن في دبي، ولدي قصة من تجربتي هنا في الفندق...

كنت في القائة الإنتظار في الفندق، وموظف الإستلام هو رجل هندي. أمامه زبون من سعودية ولا يستطيع التكلم بالإنجليزية. فأنا قرارت أن تقول ’هل ممكن مسعادتك’؟
مندهش قليلاً لأنّ لا يشبه كنا يمكن أن أتكلم العربية، ولكن أنا أحول مترجم الكلام...:

أول جمل بسيط جداً هو:
"كم ليلة ستبقي هنا؟ ليلة وحدة؟"
"لا، سأمكث هنا يومين... ولكن حجن الغرفة هو لثلاثا ليال... يجب أن تغير هذا... هذا خطى""
و بعد هذا جزء سعب وأنا لا أستطيع مترجمه...
The Indian guy told the Saudi guy that it was a contract between him and the internet company that he used to make the hotel room reservation, and therefore he didn't have the ability to change anything with the reservation. With the Saudi guy pissed off and the Indian guy insisting on a down payment for the room, I had to exit my services as translator... especially as the Saudi guy stormed off to get his family and go up to the room despite the objections of the hotel receptionist. Failure on my part as a translator or just cultural haggling going on?? Maybe you guys could convert this situation into a proper dialog... I obviously got stuck on some of the more difficult parts of this.

lol Jenkki, what a story! good you were not stuck in the middle and nice you offered the help anyway. We could consider this experience as a dialogue for one of our lessons, it would be fun actually.
Few notes on your Arabic text, the word for (the hall) is (القاعة) with (ع), another word is (reservation) (حجز) with (ز) at the end. Finally it is (صعب) and not (سعب). Of course there are other structural things, but probably these are the main obvious ones at the moment. And well done for your courage to delve into being a translator :)

Also Jenkki, to answer your previous question. Yes, it is mainly because of the use of (أن). The answer to this question can be very advanced anyway even to specialists. I will try to simplify it, the reason is (أن) being (adaat na9b - an article that gives fat-ha to the end of a verb following it), and (لن) is also adaat na9b, so you can't use two adaat na9b articles after each other, while (laa) is not adaat nasb, so we use it. Hope you got the sense of why it is used at least.

Thanks Ehab! I noticed the mispelling of حجز myself, but too late to click the edit button... And, also thanks for your words of encouragment... I'm finding all sorts of opportunities here in Dubai to speak Arabic. Everyone keeps asking me where and how in the world did you learn Arabic? I guess Arabic Pod should rightly get some of the credit, but it's a bit hard to explain. Quite a few of the Indian and Pakistani shopkeepers, taxi drivers, helpers, etc... can speak Arabic. I've also met quite a few native Arabic speakers, and it's lovely practice here. I just wish I would have more opportunities where it's a must to speak Arabic, because if you can cheat and use English, you almost always do... :cheese:

@ Ehab

I have a question about the preposition fawq (ﻓﻮﻖ), which is mentioned briefly in this podcast. “Fawq” corresponds to two English prepositions (“on” and “above”). How do Arabs disambiguate “fawq”? How, for instance, would you say “The fly isn’t on the bed. It’s above the bed.”? Would you have to use verbs and say “The fly isn’t sitting on the bed (or: walking across the bed). It’s hovering above it.”?

Nice question, Desmond.
The quick answer is (On) could be translated as (على) whereas (above) is (فوق). So you would say:
The fly is on the table - الذبابة على الطاولة
The fly is above the table - الذبابة فوق الطاولة
Hope that is straightforward.

Thanks for the useful information, Ehab. But doesn't "fawq" also mean "on"? According to several reference works I've consulted, "fawq" can mean both "on" and "above", and there are no grounds for doubting that this information is correct.

Consider the example sentence about the saw in the lesson entitled "Ismulaalah". Is the saw really hanging in the air above the table? I don't think I've ever seen a saw in this position.

To clarify this, we need to go a bit deeper, and see where the word (fawq) is coming from. It is derived from (faaq) which is (something went higher), like when you say (faaq al7add فاق الحدّ) which means (went above the limit). From that, the word (fawq) could be used when u have a situation where something is on top (notice I say On) or above, because anything that is on top of another thing is higher.
So to summarise, the best translation for (fawq) is above and it could be used as On as well if the items are touching each other, however, the best translation for On is (على).
Hope that is clearer now.

@ Ehab

The etymological information you have provided explains how the preposition fawq (ﻓﻮﻖ) has acquired two distinct meanings which have to be rendered by different words (“on” and “above”) in English.

You and Mohamed tend to overuse “on top of”. In modern English “on top of” is generally employed in a figurative sense. Thus, for instance, we can say “We’re living on top of each other” (= The flat / house is too small) or “On top of everything else (= to make matters worse), he lost his job”. When “on top of” is used in a literal sense, it often refers to a surface which is out of reach or hard to reach. Thus, we can say “The child climbed on top of the table” or “We put the box on top of a high cupboard”. Under normal circumstances we just say “on” (e.g. The bottle is on the table”).

I’m still puzzled by the saw above the table in the podcast entitled “Ismulaalah”. If you consult the article about carpentry (ﻨﺠﺎﺮﺓ) in the Arabic version of Wikipedia, you’ll find a photograph of a carpenter’s workshop. Some tools have been hung on a wall, but I can’t see anything hanging from the ceiling. Why on earth would anyone hang a saw from a ceiling? If the ceiling is low, people will have to walk round it to avoid being injured, and if the ceiling is high the carpenter will have to climb up a ladder to take the saw down.

Wow, how cool is that! I just returned from a lovely hotel in Egypt, and here I find a lesson suggested by myself, and it's about hotel too :) Thanks guys, you're the best....

I'm interested in the word muzdawwaj... my spoken Arabic background is Tunisian country (as opposed to the cities). We would have said something like sareer jawzi from the root jheem wow zell. I can't identify the root of muzdawwaj, I'm guessing it is not classical.

Thanks, I love your podcasts, first opportunity in many years to train my ear to spoken "standard" or classical Arabic.

Brian

@ abhandly

I don't know whether مزدوج occurs in classical Arabic texts, but it is extremely common in Modern Standard Arabic. If you run a Google search you'll find approximately 3,800,000 examples on the Net.

@ abhandy

I've just found some more information about the word you are interested in. According to a scholar called von Grunebaum, مزدوج was used as far back as the tenth century, so it must be a classical word.

@abhandy

مزدوج
is the active participle of the Form VIII verb from the root
ز و ج

ازدوج
= to be double, to be in pairs

In Form VIII verbs, ta comes after the first root letter. But here, da is used instead of ta.

Hi Vinod, nice analysis. It makes sense. I haven't seen the د replace the ت in other words before. Is this fairly common?

@abhandly

ت in the Form VIII verbs is replaced with
د when the first root letter is د or ذ or ز
and with
ط when the first root letter is ص or ض

Some examples of Form VIII verbs with ز as the first root letter

ازدحم بـ
to be overcrowded with. Root ز ح م

ازدرع
to sow. Root ز ر ع

ازدهر
to flourish, to thrive, to prosper. Root ز ه ر

ازداد
to grow. Root ز ي د

Listing more examples would take lot of space!