مَرْحَلة
root: ر-ح-ل / noun / plural: مَراحِل / definition: stage, phase
Don’t get confused, it’s not البريد (the post, mail) that we’re talking about this week—we’re actually looking at how to create words with the post- prefix, such as: postcolonial, postmodern, post-pandemic, etc.
Forming this type of construction, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear, is just about as easy as it is in English:
post- = ما بَعد
Let’s take a look at some examples:
ما بعد الاستعماريّة
postcolonialism
أدب ما بعد الاستعمار
postcolonial literature
Note that when we have a post- adjective describing a noun in English, this translates into an إضافة in Arabic (the preceding noun forms an إضافة with the ما).
So أدب in the example above can’t have الـ because it’s the first term in the إضافة. The phrase literally translates as “the literature of that which is after colonisation”.
ما بعد الحداثة
postmodern
اكتئاب ما بعد الولادة
postpartum depression
ما بعد الانتخابات
post-election
ما بعد الصراع
post-conflict
اضطراب ما بعد الصدمة
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
These next two examples are from this article (and you can find out why I think that website is great for language learners here!):
حزم تعافي ما بعد الجائحة
post-pandemic recovery packages
في مرحلة ما بعد الجائحة
in the post-pandemic stage
You can find more of these cool little phrases (which make you sound way more fluent, by the way) in the small but useful phrases series.
That’s all for now, مع السلامة!
Follow The Arabic Pages on Instagram and Twitter, and find out how you can support this blog!
If you’d like to receive email notifications whenever a new post is published on The Arabic Pages, enter your email below and click “Subscribe”:
The Arabic Pages 
One thought on “How to Say “Post-” in Arabic”