Arabic Vocabulary Resource for Students

مَورِد

root: و-ر-د / noun / plural: مَوارِد / definition: resource

It’s reading week already—which means this year is going entirely too fast and I’m mildly wildly panicking about what I’m going to do next September. At least, though, I finished writing the first essay that I actually enjoyed researching so far this year.

Anyway, today I thought I’d share a great Arabic vocabulary resource which will no doubt come in handy for us students.

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What Does إذ Mean and How Do We Use It?

سَبَب

root: س-ب-ب / noun / plural: أَسْباب / definition: reason, rationale

So many milestones! It’s been two years now since my first post on this blog, where I was pretty much writing for an audience of one (thanks Mum <3).

In this time, I’ve received so many messages from you guys—blog readers and fellow Arabic students—telling me how much you love the content. I had no idea where this little project was heading at the start, but I’m so glad that it’s been useful for so many.

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Three Arabic Words for “Obstacle”

صَعْب

root: ص-ع-ب / adjective / definition: difficult

Last week’s Wehr Wednesdays post included an Arabic word meaning “obstacle”, which is just one of those words that you’ll use frequently when writing Arabic essays or the like. So I thought why not look at three of the most common Arabic translations for it here?

Interestingly, all three begin with ع—I wonder if that’s because the ع poses an obstacle in the way of mastering Arabic pronunciation… The word صعب (“difficult”) has an ع too, in the middle.

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How to Form Words with the “Re-” Prefix in Arabic

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.

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The Online Dictionary for Arabic Dialects

لَهْجة

root: ل-ه-ج / noun / plural: لَهْجات / definition: dialect

I can’t believe we officially hit the 200th-post mark with Wehr Wednesdays #99, where we looked at the phrase ضاح للشمس—a phrase which has been allocated to the “I love this bit of vocab and I can’t explain why” section of my brain (where the verb طفِق also resides, that’s another mightily cool one for me).

My brain was just about to wander off to calculate how many hours I’ve possibly spent on all these posts but we have something more important to discuss, because a new Arabic resource has recently been added to my favourites bar! And anything that’s earned a place up there, alongside the Hans Wehr, has to be shared.

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Arabic Headline Analysis #7

جامِعة

root: ج-م-ع / noun / plural: جامِعات / definition: university

So I’m finally here, at university (!), after a four-hour drive which depleted my already-sunken energy levels and temporarily numbed my arm that had the misfortune of being the support pillar of a precariously-balanced bag.

But who cares about the fatigue, the six hills I have to trek up to get to my seminar building, and the constant hum of the fridge in my little studio flat that’s driving me up the wall… because I’m so excited to be formally studying Arabic again!

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Useful Arabic Phrases Meaning “Tantamount to”

عَكَسَ

root: ع-ك-س / form I verb / present tense: يَعكِسُ / definition: to reflect

I was toying with the title Fancy Ways to Say “Is” in Arabic for this post—which would have been reflective of the content, albeit a little ambiguous.

Nevertheless, the phrases we’re going to look at in this post which—by dictionary definition—mean “tantamount to” are often simply translated as “is”.

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Four Arabic Verbs Meaning “to Listen”

أُذن

root: ء-ذ-ن / noun / plural: آذان / definition: ear

A few months ago, we took a look at a plethora of Arabic words that all mean “to look at”. Now, we’re adding to the synonyms series by exploring another common verb related to one of the senses: “to listen“!

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Quadriliteral Active Participles in Arabic

اِسم فاعِل

root: ف-ع-ل / phrase / definition: active participle

If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have told you that I lead a somewhat minimalist life—I hate having *things* cluttering up spaces around me which could very well be left empty. (This is, of course, ignoring my book-filled shelves and surfaces—books are entirely different to things.)

But packing up my stuff to move to university—which starts in less than three weeks!—has made me question that. Because all of a sudden, my room is populated with two stuffed suitcases, kitchen pots and utensils, and a scattering of half-packed bags plopped on the floor.

Anyway, anyway… I digress.

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Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #8

سيرة

root: س-ي-ر / noun / plural: سِيَر / definition: biography

For this post in the literature translation series, we’ll be going word-by-word through a non-fiction excerpt, taken from بغداد: سيرة مدينة (Baghdad: Biography of a City) by the Iraqi writer نجم والي (Najem Wali).

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