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thank you, guys. very useful as usual! do you think you could do a short dialogue of this kind sometime, presenting the different ways it would be spoken in Levantine, Egyptian, Gulf and Darija/Northern African Arabic? Keep it up!

love iT to see you are back to keep our learning process going .cheers.great practical lesson.

So glad I found you guys, has made Arabic so much more accessible. Keep up the good work!

On the guessing dialogue - let's see:

1. Mohamed, to whom did you give the money?
2. I gave it to the big liar.
3. What? You couldn't give it to someone other than the big liar?
4. Yes, except I trust him more than you.

Ok?

Why does Arabic negate things that are not negated. like the dialog says maa e7'tart which i thought meant did not give because maa negates a verb right? arent you actually trying to say a posotive you did give it to him? I know what you have is correct, I'm just curious as to how that works. or is the maa the question version here?

Amc1519, the way this sentence is constructed is to negate the verb then add an exception. So the direct translation of the sentence is:
Didn't you chose anyone except Samir?
The (maa) negates the word (i7'tart) so the meaning is (you didn't chose), and the word (illa) means (except).
This method of negating and doing an exception is very common in Arabic. The more you hear and read it the more you get used to it.

thanks for the lesson.

Very helpful