Learning Arabic, one page at a time
حَلْقة
root: ح-ل-ق / noun / plural: حَلَقات / definition: episode
I’m rushed off my feet this week and to top it off, I have an important deadline lying menacingly in wait on the footstep of Friday evening when it will, assuredly, catch me off-guard and drag me into the lair of panic that I’ve frequented so often, it has several caffeinated drinks waiting for me.
Still, it’s never too busy for a (short) blog post.
Continue reading “Resource: Arabic Literature Podcast”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
مَصْدَر
root: ص-د-ر / noun / plural: مَصادِر / definition: verbal noun, source
Back in June, when we looked at the different types of Arabic roots, we mentioned that hollow roots are those with either و or ي as the middle letter. Like ق-و-ل and غ-ي-ر.
Verbal nouns (مصادر) derived from hollow roots sometimes follow a different pattern to those derived from sound (regular) roots.
Continue reading “Verbal Nouns of Hollow Roots”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
مُتَنَوِّع
root: ن-و-ع / active participle of form V / definition: various
In one of the examples in Arabic Observations: Words with Antonymic Meanings, we saw how changing the preposition following a verb could produce two completely opposite meanings.
While the meaning of the form V verb تَسَبَّبَ / يَتَسَبَّبُ doesn’t change that drastically, it still shifts depending on the accompanying preposition/s.
Continue reading “The Verb يتسبّب and its Prepositions”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
بُعْد
root: ب-ع-د / noun / plural: أَبْعاد / definition: distance, dimension
So I’m back from my one-week solo trip to Istanbul which was perfect on all fronts. To feel so immersed in history, culture, spirituality… and to be there with my thoughts alone… was simply unbeatable.
With every step I took through the palaces, museums, and mosques, and across the bridges over the Golden Horn, and with every breathtaking sweeping view from the city’s rooftops, I felt as though I was stepping back to look at my own life.
Continue reading “Distance and Perspective”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
عَيْن
root: ع-ي-ن / noun / plural: عُيون أو أَعْيُن / definition: eye, spring
Here we are with another post in the Arabic Observations series, and this one starts with the word عَين (“eye”).
When you look up عَين in the dictionary and scoot your finger across a little from its first definition, you’ll land on another meaning: “spring (of water)”.
Continue reading “Arabic Observations: The Eye and Other Water Sources”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
مُضَعَّف
root: ض-ع-ف / passive participle of form II / definition: doubled, geminate
As we saw in the post Arabic Roots: the Different Types, geminate roots are those whose final two letters are the same. Like م-س-س or ح-ر-ر.
When it comes to the form I active participle of geminate roots then, we might expect its pattern to be the same as that of regular, sound roots (i.e. فاعِل)—hence we might expect حارِر as an active participle. But that’s not the case.
Continue reading “Form I Active Participles of Geminate Roots”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
إتباع
root: ت-ب-ع / verbal noun of form IV / definition: to make something follow something else
It was a long time ago when I first realised that a linguistic phenomenon that occurs in various languages—like my heritage language, Turkish—can also be found in Arabic.
Now I wish I could remember the exact Arabic example I came across all that time ago, but… alas.
Continue reading “Arabic Observations: الإتباع”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
ناهٍ
root: ن-ه-ي / form I active participle / definition: prohibitive
Under certain words in the dictionary, we find a list of their various usages—some collocations, some phrases.
ناهٍ—which is a form I active participle from a defective root, ن-ه-ي (hence the kasratayn ending)—is one example of this.
Continue reading “Dictionary Finds: ناهيك”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
مُواصَلة
root: و-ص-ل / verbal noun of form III / definition: continuation
This week we’re continuing on from last week’s literature translation where we went through the first part of our extract:
Continue reading “Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #11”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
سِكّين
root: س-ك-ك / noun / plural: سَكاكين / definition: knife
As September swept in, I made a resolution to read more in both English and Arabic. Novels, specifically, because I miss getting lost in them as I used to.
And I’ve now, for various reasons, found myself in a situation where I have multiple novels on the go—an unintentional fulfilment of my resolution, I suppose—including some in Arabic.
Continue reading “Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #10”A new word or phrase from the Hans Wehr dictionary, every Wednesday.
The Arabic Pages 