A Useful Structure: ما إن ـــــ حتى ـــــ

إبْريق

root: ب-ر-ق / noun / plural: أَباريق / definition: teapot, jug

With the pouring of a never-emptying teapot and the stealing of smiling glances, another Sunday passed and this week has left me in unfamiliar but exciting territory.

I served the dolma and wondered if any of the leaves had gotten stuck between my teeth. I run my tongue, now, over a new name in my mouth and re-count grains of rice.

I lose focus and start again.

I’m over Covid and back to appointments, meetings, and plans. Autumn is here and everyone can feel it in the air. (It’s cold.)

(But my custom-made wool cardigan from my very talented friend, @lettuce_sew, is keeping me warm—it’s a garment, a hug, and a weighted blanket all in one. This is not an ad, by the way. It’s a genuine recommendation for cold, lonely people.)

And in other news, I’ve finally made it back to my desk—physically and metaphorically—and I’m trying to settle back into a study routine.

Whilst getting into my reading, a little Arabic structure caught my eye and I thought I’d share it with you:

…ما إن… حتّى

And it means:

no sooner had… than…

one had hardly… when…

For example, we might hear something like:

وما إن دَخَلَتْ البَيْتَ حَتّى أَشْهَقَتْ بِالبُكاء

no sooner had she entered the house than she burst into tears

/ she had barely entered the house when she burst into tears

Neat little grammatical structure, right? Definitely something to add to our linguistic repertoire and whip out when we want to make a case for our expert grasp on the language.

You can never really have enough of those phrases. Check out equally impressive ones in this series.

!إلى اللقاء