Three Ways to Say “One of” in Arabic

واحِد

root: و-ح-د / active participle of form I / definition: one

Do you know the different ways to say “one of” in Arabic? It seems quite a simple thing, but I remember that I didn’t actually learn these three ways until my third year of university.

And if you haven’t learnt them yet, keep reading!

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Reference: A List of Abbreviations in the Hans Wehr Dictionary

اِخْتِصار

root: خ-ص-ر / noun / plural: اِختِصارات / definition: abbreviation

So, admittedly, this may not be the most interesting post you’ll read on this blog. But anything that helps with understanding the Hans Wehr dictionary—and, by extension, Arabic—is worth posting, in my opinion.

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Arabic Observations: Same Root Letters, Different Sequence

تَرْتيب

root: ر-ت-ب / verbal noun of form II / plural: تَرْتيبات / definition: order, sequence

I just couldn’t resist another post in the Arabic Observations series this week! (But an in-demand post about the Hans Wehr dictionary is coming soon! Can you guess what it might be?)

For this post, we’re taking things down to the root again and looking at words with the same root letters in a different sequence. Could there be any connection between the meanings of these words?

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Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #5

شَمس

root: ش-م-س / noun / plural: شُموس / definition: sun

Welcome back! For our fifth post in the literature translation series, we’re taking a look at an excerpt from the famous novel رجال في الشمس (Men in the Sun) by the Palestinian writer غسان كنفاني (Ghassan Kanafani).

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Four Arabic Roots to Express the Phrase “on the Verge of”

أَرْبَعَة

root: ر-ب-ع / noun / definition: four

We couldn’t go much longer without another synonyms post (even though my posts-to-write list is ever-expanding with other wonderful things)—so this week we’re taking a look at four different roots that we can use to express the meaning of “on the verge of” in Arabic.

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Root Exploration: ك-ش-ف

جَذْر

root: ج-ذ-ر / noun / plural: جُذور / definition: root

I feel a very nerdy rush of excitement as I begin this post, because it’s the first in the new Root Exploration series!

In this series of posts, we’re going to take a single Arabic root and explore all of its different forms, derivatives, and collocations—using the Hans Wehr (no surprise there!) as our reference.

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Using سبق أن

بَديل

root: ب-د-ل / noun / plural: بَدائِل / definition: substitute, alternative

Another day, another grammar post! I just love finding different ways to express the same word or structure in Arabic—although perhaps you already know that, considering the fact that this blog has a synonyms series.

This week, I’m presenting you with an alternative way to express the pluperfect tense, instead of using the previously-discussed “كان + a past tense verb” construction.

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Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #4

اِستِعارة

root: ع-و-ر / noun / plural: اِستِعارات / definition: metaphor

And… we’re back with the fourth post in the literature translation series! This time, we’re going through an excerpt from another poem: مَسرَح (Theatre) by الصادق الرضي (Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi), whose poetry I previously mentioned in this post.

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Arabic Observations: Duplicated Roots with Reduplicated Forms

مُلاحَظة

root: ل-ح-ظ / noun / plural: مُلاحَظات / definition: observation

The title might appear somewhat complex, but this topic is just plain cool.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Arabic Observations series, you might remember the post Arabic Observations: Doubled Roots, where we looked at the properties and meanings of roots such as ع-س-ع-س and د-ن-د-ن and ب-ء-ب-ء.

And now, it’s time to share another one of my observations: some of these reduplicated roots have duplicated versions.

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Five Arabic Verbs for “to Include”

تَرادُف

root: ر-د-ف / noun / definition: synonymity

It’s hard to believe: it’s almost been a full year since I started posting on The Arabic Pages, and Wehr Wednesdays #49 was our 100th post! (Most surprising is that I’ve kept up with two posts a week. Two!)

As for today’s post—a.k.a. #101—we’re diving into another edition of the synonyms series with five Arabic verbs for “to include”.

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