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In this podcast Ehab uses the word ﺒﻴﺖ to denote a line of verse. This lexical item looks and sounds like the word for “house”, but a slight difference becomes apparent when we examine the “harakaat”. There is a “damma” over the last letter of the word for “line”, but there is no diacritical sign whatever above the final consonant of the word for “house”. Is this the only difference? Do both words have the same plural?

I recently listened to a podcast by a gentleman who teaches Arabic at Georgetown University. The American lecturer said that the Arabic word for “house” could be pronounced like Engl. “bite” or Engl. “bay” + “t”. I think he’s right, for I’ve heard both phonetic variants in dozens of YouTube videos where Arabic-speaking journalists interview Arabic politicians, singers and writers.

What about the word that means “line of verse”? In the podcast Ehab pronounces the vowel of ﺒﻴﺖ like the vowel in Engl. “bay”. Would it be equally correct to pronounce this noun like Engl. “bite”?

Yes, I too was thrown off a bit by the alternate use of بيت , to mean "line, verse", perhaps this has a less religious connotation, since the words I generally know for verse is سرة . I am looking forward to the explanation. Very nice sayings!

Love em

Tomes

Also, I'm a bit thrown off by the last line, I was looking in my Hans-Wehr... and the word الفتى talks about youth, or adolescents... and I'm pretty sure المنسوب means like "position" or "level" or "attributes"... so I'm confused how that translations became "ignorance puts down the honorable man"... perhaps a translation could be
"Knowledge raises the forsaken to prestige, and ignorance prevents youth their heir/rightful spot"...

I know there's probably alot of cultural sub-meanings parsed in there... but just trying to see how "honourable man" was derived.

Thanks for any insight.

Tomes

The omission of a letter can make a considerable difference, Tomes. ﺴﺮﺓ means “navel”. The word ﺴﻮﺮﺓ denotes a surah, i.e. a chapter of the Qur’an. Each chapter consists of verses, and the technical term for a Coranic verse is ﺁﻴﺔ (generally transcribed as “ayah” in English).

A verse of poetry is called bayt بيت in Arabic. I think it's pronounced the same way as the word house