تَشْكيل
root: ش-ك-ل / verbal noun of form II / definition: forming, formation
I’ve never been great when it comes to time perception. But I do know that it feels like ages since we last had a grammar post on here (the last was Quadriliteral Active Participles in Arabic, it seems).
I can’t stay away from grammar for too long, so in this post, I’m going to go through two ways to form words that have the “re-” prefix in English—like rebuild, recycling, and reintegrated.
The key verb we need to form “re-” constructions is the form IV verb from the root ع-و-د:
أَعادَ / يُعيدُ / الإعادة
(Note that the form I verb from this root is used in another useful construction—check out How to Say “No Longer” in Arabic!)
So there are two ways we can use the form IV verb to create the “re-” prefix: we either use the verb itself (أعاد / يُعيدُ) or the verbal noun (إعادة). Let’s take a look at each of them…
With the verb…
We can use the verb أعاد/يعيد plus a verbal noun (a.k.a. مصدر), where the verbal noun is the object of the verb.
Examples:
أَعادَ بناءَ المَتحَفِ
he rebuilt the museum
يُعيدونَ فَرزَ الأَصوات
they’re recounting the votes
الصين تُعيدُ إغلاقَ صالات السينما
China re-closes cinemas
(This last example is taken from the headline we analysed in this post!)
With the verbal noun…
The other way to form “re-” words is to use the verbal noun إعادة followed by another verbal noun in an إضافة.
Examples:
إعادةُ التَّدويرِ
recycling
أرادت إعادةَ تَصميمِ المَوقِعِ
she wanted to redesign the website
(Note how we can also say أرادت أن تُعيد تصميمَ الموقع, using أن plus the verb in the place of the مصدر.)
تَمَّ إعادةُ تَأهيلِهِ
he was rehabilitated
And there we have it, another useful construction to know that will no doubt come in handy!
Don’t forget to check out the rest of the grammar explanations we have so far on the blog, and I’ll see you soon.
!مع السلامة
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