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I’ve often wondered how the noun ﺮﺃﻱ would be spelt if the first person singular possessive pronoun ﻲ had to be added to it. Now my curiosity has been satisfied. ﺮﺃﻴﻲ looks quite elegant.

Hi Desmond, for some reason the letter ر didn't show in the Arabic noun you have written, just so everyone is clear I think you meant رأي which means opinion.

Another example, the noun كرسي which means chair and ends with ي . To make it first person possessive it can become كرسيي

That's very strange, Mohamed. I can see the missing letter on my screen. Thanks for the additional example. I know how to pronounce a lot of Arabic words, but sometimes I'm not quite sure how to spell them.

I have a question about ﻤﻓﻌﻮﻞ. In this podcast Elias pronounces ﻤﻓﻌﻮﻞ in exactly the same way as Ehab and Mohamed do (i.e. two syllables, a stress on the second syllable, with medial “ayn” pronounced like a Parisian “r”). Sierra, however, makes ﻤﻓﻌﻮﻞ a trisyllabic word and pronounces “ayn” like the French preposition “à”. Are both these phonetic variants equally common and equally correct?

Mea culpa, Desmond, مفعول should be a two-syllable word. Thanks for pointing that out!

Dear Sierra,

I can see you were very busy this morning. Phonetically, ﻤﻓﻌﻭﻞ must be quite a difficult word for native speakers of American English, though it will be easy for native speakers of French or German. Perhaps the term might be discussed in more detail in an upper intermediate lesson. There doesn’t seem to be any satisfactory English equivalent. Some Arabists have defined it as “an extraneous element” or “a sentence element which is neither a verb nor an agent”. I love these difficult Arabic terms. I’ve always enjoyed juggling with abstractions and dissecting abstruse concepts.

Perhaps I ought to draw your attention to two other errors I recently noticed in your podcasts. In “Studying in the Dark” Elias talks about the “imperative tense” of a verb, and in “Holding your Breath” he refers to “the case of a verb” (he means the subjunctive). The imperative and the subjunctive are moods. They are neither tenses nor cases (cf. the definition of “mood” in the free online Farlex dictionary). The incorrect use of “case” and “tense” will not confuse me, but it will confuse inexperienced language learners whose knowledge of grammatical terminology may be shaky.

There is another topic I would like to mention. I recently discovered Radio Orient, which is run by Fouad Naïm and belongs to the powerful Hariri family. I’m very impressed by the quality of the broadcasts and have learnt a great deal of Arabic by listening to the news podcasts. I listen to the news in French before attempting to understand the Arabic podcasts. Perhaps you ought to recommend this radio station to Arabicpod listeners and say something about the Lebanese media scene.

Best wishes
Desmond

"Radio Orient" does indeed seem like a good tip for picking up the kind of modern standard vocabulary used in the media. However, I'm not sure it's anything like what's actually spoken "on the streets". I have very little experience to go by, of course, and I guess what really matters is exposure - listening to the radio, watching TV, and reading.

I think you’ll like Radio Orient, Karen. There are four basic options: “le Direct”, “Journal en Français”, “Journal en Arabe” and “Journal du Liban”. You won’t hear any colloquialisms. The Arabic, like the French, is very formal, but that’s not necessarily a problem. I think it’s advisable to learn Modern Standard Arabic before tackling the dialects. Learning a dialect before having mastered MSA is a bit like putting the cart before the horse.

If you listen attentively to the interviews you’ll notice a certain number of phonetic features that betray the speakers’ geographical origin. Typical examples are the substitution of a hard “g” for “j” in ﺮﺠﻞ (Egyptian) and the characteristic Lebanese pronunciation of the “ta marbuta” in words like ﻨﻜﺘﺔ (joke).

When you’ve listened to the news in French you’ll know what kind of vocabulary you’ll need in order to understand the parallel Arabic podcast. If there are reports about the strikes in France or the plans for a referendum in Sudan you can go to the Lessan dictionaries or the “desert-sky” site and revise the relevant vocabulary before listening to the news in Arabic. It’s advisable to interrupt the podcast from time to time to note collocations and phonetic peculiarities.

Here are some of the words that have been used repeatedly this week:
ﺍﺴﺘﻓﺘﺎﺀ (referendum)
ﻗﻤﺔ (summit)
ﺇﻀﺭﺍﺐ (strike)
ﺘﻗﺎﻋﺪ (retirement)
ﻗﺎﻨﻮﻦ (law)
ﻨﻗﺎﺒﺔ (trade union)
ﻤﻓﺎﻮﻀﺎﺖ (negotiations)
ﺍﻨﻓﺠﺎﺮ (explosion)

As soon as you hear ﺍﻀﺮﺍﺒﺎﺖ (strikes) you’ll know they’re talking about the situation in France, and when you hear ﻤﻓﺎﻮﻀﺎﺖ (negotiations) the odds are that they’ll be talking about the Middle East.

If you listen to the weather forecasts you’ll always hear words like ﻤﺸﻤﺱ (sunny), ﺃﻤﻂﺎﺮ (the plural of the word for “rain”), ﻤﺴﺘﻗﺮ (stable) and ﻤﺘﻓﺮﻖ (irregular). ﻤﺸﻤﺱ is often repeated about a dozen times, and so is the expression ba’d (ﺒﻌﺪ al-dhuhr (ﺍﻠﻈﻬﺮ (in the afternoon).

Yes, RO is a great complement to our wonderful AP podcasts. Thanks again, Desmond! It also seems a bit easier to understand than dialect. Nevertheless, I must admit that I still love listening to and trying to understand Levantine ...

لَمْ and لَمّا bring about negation in the past tense and they make the present tense verb jussive (take a sukoon) And the sign of the jussive case (jazm) in the af’aalul khamsa (five verbs) is the emitting of the noon and in the af’aalul ‘arb’a (four verbs) a sukoon.

I sent one of many examples of the f7l having case....the present tense f7lmuduria, is often said to be marfu, mansub , majroor, or even maizzom, as these things come from quráan,They did not take into consideration the wonders of english moody grammar, and we english at that time were mostly concerned with not being dead, or raped and pillaged by folks we had not been introduced to.so it looks to me like the verb has case endings, thus to refer to the case makes sense .I find the mood thingy not a very good fit for what happens in arabic.

I agree with Desmond regarding learning MSA before colloquial unless one is in an 'immersed' situation in a particular Arab country where one has the regular opportunity to acquire the language from the people around one (or from a spouse!). I saw an interesting feature on TV a little while back about an ordinary, unemployed English man who had moved to Poland, picked up the language through conversation and became a firefighter there.