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هذا الدرس جميل جدا جدا
After a long and hard day at work my mind was not really in the "studying mood", but I checked for a new lesson and found this little jewel waiting for me )
Thanks guys, it is just great!!!

Yip, made me smile too. Some good words there, especially liked the phrase
'khuta min haris ilmurma', sure I'll be able to impress with that one!

Grammatically, the final sentence is particularly interesting. The basic syntactic pattern is very simple: NOUN + [NOUN + POSSESSIVE PRONOUN SUFFIX] + PREDICATIVE ADJECTIVE. The first element is a man’s name, the second an abstract noun with a suffix (ﺨﺒﺮﺘﻪ), the third an adjective (ﻗﻠﻴﻠﺔ) which modifies the abstract noun. The meaning is perfectly clear. A literal translation would read “*Mustafa Al-Abbad his experience is minimal.” In normal English we could say “Mustafa Al-Abbad lacks experience” or “Mustafa Al-Abbad hasn’t got much experience.”

The most interesting thing about this construction is the way in which a hierarchical relationship is established between the first two elements. The man’s name and the quality he lacks are simply juxtaposed. There is a similar syntactic pattern in everyday spoken German, but the construction is considered sub-standard. A typical example would be “Frau Meyer ihr Mann ist tot.” (literally “Mrs Meyer her husband is dead” = “Mrs Meyer’s husband is dead”).

The Arabic sentence under discussion raises two interesting questions:

(1) Is this construction colloquial or regional?

(2) Could the abstract noun ﺨﺒﺮﺘﻪ be replaced by a noun denoting a person if we wanted to say something like “Mustafa's wife is dead”?

Me again, back at the lesson tonight , I hope so much, Mohamed and Ehab, you will instruct us all the important things about the arabic football terminology before the worldcup, only some more months to go now, I will for sure check the other football lessons, which you have already posted!!
I love the term كرة طويلة which is very straight to the point, and hopefully we will get to see some of those great, fantastic and unusual goals. If my mind remembers correctly however, the only arabic team in the worldcup is Algeria?
Anyhow, I think the most difficult word (to pronounce) is التغطية wowwww... Tongue, gums and the rest are not cooperating well
Take care and keep going!

Dear na7la,

Arabic football terminology is available on numerous Arabic websites, and I’ve ferreted out a considerable number of technical terms over the past few months. Here are some of the items you might be looking for:

darba (ﻀﺮﺒﺔ) marma (ﻤﺮﻤﻰ) (pronounced “darbatu marma”): goal kick (Ger. Torabschlag)

darba (ﻀﺮﺒﺔ) zawiya (ﺰﺍﻮﻴﺔ) (pronounced “darbatu zawiya”): corner kick (Ger. Eckstoß)

mubara (ﻤﺒﺎﺮﺍﺓ): match (Ger. Spiel)

hakam (ﺤﻜﻡ): referee (Ger. Schiedsrichter)

mal'ab (ﻤﻠﻌﺐ) kura (ﻜﺮﺓ) al-qadam (ﺍﻠﻗﺪﻡ) (pronounced “mal'abu kurat al-qadam”): football pitch (Ger. Fußballfeld)

thanks for this additional voc.-great job - as an exercise I do listen now and than to football commentary on e.g.dubai sports .
all this will help in me understanding a bit more -

Dear Plop,

I’m glad you found my contribution useful. Although Arabic football terminology has been translated from English and French, it isn’t always easy to deal with certain Arabic terms. Take the terms for different types of players, for example. “Reserve player” seems to correspond exactly to “laa'eb (ﻻﻋﺐ ihtiiaat (ﺍ ﺍﺤﺘﻴﺎ (For some inexplicable reason I can't close the bracket here!)"Ihtiiaat" means "caution” or “precaution”, so the expression seems fairly plausible. But what are the best Arabic equivalents of “forward”, “striker” and “defender”? I’ve found two terms for “forward” and two terms for “defender”, but I’m not quite sure what to do with “striker”.

Let’s begin with “forward”. According to my sources, “forward” corresponds to “laa'eb (ﻻﻋﺐ hujuum (ﻫﺠﻮﻡ” or “muhaajim (ﻤﻬﺎﺠﻡ”. That would be “Stürmer” in German and “attaquant” in French. However, I’m not quite sure which Arabic term is more common. I suspect that ﻤﻬﺎﺠﻡ is the ideal equivalent since the Arabic version of Wikipedia contains a fairly detailed article on this term.

There isn’t much difference between “striker” and “forward”, and the explanations given in the English version of Wikipdedia aren’t very clear. If I had to translate “striker” into French or German I’d opt for “buteur” and “Torjäger” just to be on the safe side. I’m not quite sure whether there’s an Arabic term that would fit the bill. Ehab and Mohamed might be able to help here since they both play football.

This brings us to the third English term: “defender” (Fr. défenseur, Ger. Abwehrspieler). ﻤﺪﺍﻓﻊ (mudaafe') is probably the ideal equivalent since a long article has been devoted to this term in the Arabic version of Wikipedia. However, I’ve also come across “laa'eb (ﻻﻋﺐ difaa' (ﺪﻓﺎﻉ.

I’ve just noticed that I’ve misspelt the Arabic word for “precaution”, which is ﺍﺤﺘﻴﺎﻄ. When I unsuccessfully attempted to close the bracket I inadvertently deleted the last letter of the Arabic noun in question.

Good luck to England tonight, let's hope for an interesting match

That was quite a (خطا من حارس المرمى الإنجليزي). Congrats to the US team who played with loads of spirit and heart! I really enjoyed that! (Sorry Mohamed and Ehab... )

Spot on comment in the right lesson at the right time. Yes, it was disappointing England didn't manage to win the first game, but you did it with 4-0, so well done Germany (أحسنتم).

Nice goals, wasn't it... and, with respect to this lesson, luckily our goalie was fully contentrated, ya salaaaaaam
Italians... beware this time: we will not accept anymore defeats from you ))

Here we have خطأ as 'a mistake' which we've had previously as 'wrong' and غلطة as 'a mistake'. Are these words synonymous?

Psibear - indeed there is more than one way to skin a cat.

غلطة - to make or commit a mistake or an error err be mistaken be at fault be wrong

خطأ - error mistake fault خَطَأ wrong incorrect خَطَأً by mistake erroneously wrong(ly) incorrectly faultily improperly

Thanks aliyah.m, I enjoy finding out whether words are synonyms or have differing nuanced meanings. I recently I found out that one of two words I knew for weather, aljaw (vs al6ks) has an extended meaning to include atmosphere & air.