#arabic studyblr

[joy-is-what-it-means]

Coffee and a sweet treat never fail🧡

📖 Currently reading: No Place on Earth by Christa Wolf

[halalhannah]

Studyblrs: I’m looking for an Arabic/Spanish language learning pal to do some snailmail penpalling + some duolingo / study sesh’es with! Pleaseeee if you’re learning Arabic or Spanish and are interested, pls send me a message! >w<)

[mohkomx]

i’m interesting in learning arabic (khaleeji) and korean. i’m doing spanish at school and at some point, i would love to learn german. i’m a native english speaker. please interact so i can get more languages on my feed <3

[glumblr]

Arabic Essential Grammar #4

Hello again! Sorry it’s been 2 weeks but I am *almost* done with my summer school woo!

ANYWAYS today’s topic was requested by somebody, but I can’t find who, so if you’re reading this, this is for YOU. 

Today we are looking at - 

Inna (إن) and Kaana (كان) and their sisters!

Sisters? in Grammar? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??

Don’t worry! I will do my best to explain. To understand this, you’ll need to know how cases work in Arabic, so go check out my post on this to get a basic understanding on the function of each case  and how it is represented. 

Okay, so what are Inna (إن) and Kaana (كان)?

They represent categories of words which affect the case of what follows them.  Yes, these are their “sisters”. So Inna and her sisters all follow one rule, and Kaana and her sisters follow another. Think of it as two different households, each having their own way of life  and their schedule. 

In grammatical terms, this “way of life” and “daily schedule” refers to the word order and the case of the different components of the sentence they’re in. 

These two households are important, since the words that fall into the categories are very common and necessary to have a nice written command of Arabic. 

Now before we get into the nitty gritty, make sure you have a good idea of what the subject ( المبتدا) and the predicate (الخبر) is in an Arabic nominal sentence. ( my post here introduces the concept quite succinctly!) . These are the two components whose cases are affected by Inna and Kaana!

Okay let’s go!

إن و أخواتها  - Inna and her sisters

Here are Inna and her sisters + their meanings - (note the shadda ّ  for some of them) 

 - إنّ - indeed ( inna)

- أنّ - that ( e.g. I heard that) (anna)

- كأنّ - as if, (ka’anna) 

- لكنّ - but (lakinna)

- ليت - i wish (layt)

- ّلعل - perhaps / i hope (la3alla) ( in comparison to “layt” which is wishful, “la3alla” implies something is more likely to occur)

- لأنّ - because (li’anna) 

now these are all used at the beginning of a sentence to have the desired meaning. However these have a catch  - whenever you use these, the subject of the sentence becomes mansuub (accusative) and the predicate becomes marfu’3 ( nominative). 

example sentence :المطرُ غزيرٌ - the rain is heavy - (al maṭaru ġazīrun) - both are in the nominative. 

- with Inna and akhwaatu-ha, this changes to - 

ليت المطرَ غزيرٌ - (layt al maṭara ġazīrun) I wish the rain was heavy - Here , the subject ( al maṭara)  is in the accusative as opposed to the nominative and the predicate remains in the nominative. 

This is the case, regardless if you wanted to say “ indeed the rain is heavy” or “as if the rain was heavy” or “ I heard that it was going to rain”. 

Why not give those sentences a try!! 

Okay now

كان و أخواتها - Kaana and her sisters

Kaana has a much bigger household lol - i have only included the most commonly used of her siblings. 

- كان - (past tense indicatior e.g. عندي = “i have” but كان عندي = “i had” ) (kaana)

- أصبح = to become (asbaḥa) 

- ظلّ - to stay, to remain (ẓalla)

- ليس - (negation indicator  - ليس عندي = “i don’t have”) (laysa)

- ما برح - ( indication of continuity) (maa bariḥa)

- مازال - to stay, remain ( sth that is continous to the present e.g. “has remained”) ( maa zaala) 

note - kaana and her sisters CONJUGATE to match their subject e.g. if you use ليس in the past tense first person singular, it will become لستُ ( i’m thinking of covering past tense conjugations next week! it’s a big one!) 

The catch when using these is the opposite to inna wa akhwaatu-ha - the subject of the sentence becomes marfu’3 ( nominative)  and the predicate becomes mansuub (accusative).

 so using the same example sentence , let’s use kaana wa akhwaatu-ha!

كان المطرُ غزيرً - (kaana maṭaru ġazīran) - the rain was heavy. 

Again, the same goes for everything else in kaana’s family. 

the end?? 

Okay, that about explains inna and kaana! It’s easier once you get your head around it. no I don’t know why it exists either. 

I know that some bits I have left quite vague ( like what the heck is an indication of continuity and how does negation work) but I’ve done that on purpose, because honestly those all belong their own posts and I want to focus on one topic at a time, to avoid getting you ( and myself!) all muddled~ 

Of course, you can explore any of the topics you want online - don’t feel like you have to wait for me! 

For books, I recommend the Routledge Arabic Grammar and the Modern Literary Arabic  by David Cowan ( old but gold!) - please try to buy them secondhand from somewhere other than amazon! let’s not support terrible working conditions! Even better - buy it local - support a charity! or your local bookshop, they definitely need it right now! 

also recommend Arabic.desert-sky.com for fantastic blog posts that are much more to the point than mine!

Thank you for reading! Please let me know of any glaring mistakes , suggestions and requests! I will do them allllll

and of course, if you have any questions dm me!

[springtimestudies]

2 september 2020 | day 3 of 100

The first week of school has been crazy, but I’m loving my classes already! I have a ton of vocabulary to memorize for Arabic, but I’m starting to remember more and more of the words I forgot over the summer, which feels good. There have already been a couple of late-night study sessions, but I’m happy to be back on the grind... which is making me think grad school might be a good idea after all 🧐

[naplousienne]

My new year resolutions

Week 1 progress 

Memorise surat Albaqarah >>>15 / 286 verses

Read 1 book per month >>>> I reached page 170 / 300

At least one complete drawing per month>>> [no progress]

Preparing for DELE A2 (Spanish)>>> [no progress]

Limit the time I spend using my phone >>>>  using the digital wellbeing in my device I was able to drop the daily time on my phone from 5 hours to 3 hours. It’s not enough but it’s a good start. 

[cloverslangblr]

Just found out that Duolingo finally made their العربية course so I might try it out to help give me vocab list ideas.

[pxlstudy]

arabic langblrs !

so I've just come back from a holiday in marrakesh and i realised how much i miss being fluent in arabic. it makes me sad to lose my mother tongue since moving to england 10 years ago, so I've decided to try to relearn from scratch

if you’re an arabic langblr please like/reblog so i can follow 💕