Lesson 16

Relative Adjectives

Relative (nominal) adjectives are formed from nouns and express the relation of an object or person to the object or phenomenon from the name of which they are formed.

Relative adjectives are formed by replacing the noun ending ـٌ /-un/ or ـَ ةٌ /-atun/ with the ending ـِ ىٌّ /-ijjun/, e.g.:

The feminine form of relative adjectives is formed from the masculine form by replacing the ending ـِ ىٌّ /-ijun/ with ـِ يَّةٌ /-ijjatun/, e.g.:

Russian (m) رُوسِيَّةٌ — رُوسِىٌّ Russian (f)

Many relative adjectives can substantivise, i.e. function as nouns, e.g.:

Exercise 1. Form the masculine and feminine relative adjectives from the following nouns:

Past Tense in Arabic

Of all the Arabic verb forms, the simplest are the past tense forms. Here are examples of past conjugation of verbs in the singular:

As can be seen from the table above, a verb in the past tense consists of an unchanging stem (in this case /katab-/ and /fahim-/) and a person-variable ending (/-tu, -ta, -ti, -a, -at/).

The verb stem consists of three root consonant sounds with their vowels (see lesson 8). The first vowel is always /a/, the second one is one of the three /a, i, u/. The third vowel depends on the person: in the 1^st and 2^nd person — sukoon, in the 3^rd person — /a/. The second vowel deserves special attention, as it is not always the same and must be known for each particular verb.

The use of personal pronouns with the verb, unlike in English, is not necessary, and an English phrase like ‘I wrote’ can be translated into Arabic with a single word كَتَبْتُ /katabtu/.

The past tense in Arabic serves to describe events that have fully occurred. It is used similarly to the simple past in English but has broader application. For example, it covers actions that happened recently (Present Perfect), long ago (Past Simple), or even hypothetically in the past (Past Perfect).

In Arabic, the form of the 3^rd person masculine singular past tense is taken as the initial, basic verb form, as it is the simplest. It is in this form that Arabic verbs appear in the dictionary, where this form is conventionally translated into Russian by the infinitive (e.g.: كَتَبَ — to write, قَرَأَ — to read, أَكَلَ — to eat, شَرِبَ — to drink etc.). In reality, these verbs denote, respectively, ‘(he) wrote, read, ate, drank’, and the Arabic verb has no infinitive form at all.

Exercise 2. Conjugate the following verbs in the singular past tense:

Exercise 3. Form the verbs from the previous exercise into the past personal forms corresponding to the following personal pronouns:

١) هى ٢) انتِ ٣) هو ٤) انا ۵) انتَ

Verbal sentence

A sentence in which the predicate is expressed by a verb is called a verbal sentence.

The verbal predicate is usually placed before the subject and agrees with it in gender and person (see also lesson 17).

If the subject could be expressed by a personal pronoun, it is most often omitted, because the subject is included in the verb-predicate.

In general, the word order in a verb sentence is as follows: 1) predicate, 2) subject, 3) objects, 4) adverbial modifiers. Each of these members of the sentence (except the predicate) may have attributes.

Accusative case and three case declension

Arabic verbs, like English verbs, are divided into transitive and non-transitive. Transitive verbs are those which require a direct object after themselves, i.e. an accusative object. Other verbs are non-transitive.

In the accusative case, names take the endings /-an/ in the indefinite state and /-a/ in the definite state.

The tanween ending /-an/ is written with the double vowel mark of /a/, which is accompanied by the addition of the silent (unpronounceable) letter alif at the end of the word, for example:

Silent alif is not added to words ending in ة (tа̄-marbūta), for example:

There are only three cases in Arabic: nominative, genitive and accusative. Here is the declension table for nouns and adjectives:

Table of three case declension

Exercise 4. Decline the following phrases in the indefinite and definite states. (the answers are given on hovering over)

Note. In the last two phrases only the first word is declined, the second word always remains in the genitive case (after the preposition).

The connection after a consonant

If a word with the article follows a word ending in a consonant, the auxiliary short vowel sound /i/ is added to that consonant to connect hamza.

This has to be done, in particular, when connecting after the particle هل (lesson 12), after the preposition عن (lesson 15), and after the verb 3^rd person feminine singular past tense, for example: قَرَأَتِ ٱلْمُدَرِّسَةُ كِتَابًا عَنِ ٱلْمَسْرَحِ ٱلرُّوسِىِّ (qara’ati-l-mudarrisatu kitа̄ban ‘ani-l-masraḥi-r-rūsijji] — The teacher read a book about the Russian theatre.

The exception to this rule is the preposition من, which receives the auxiliary vowel /a/, and also the pronouns كُمْ، هُمْ، أَنْتُمْ, which receive the auxiliary vowel /u/.

The words for the text of lesson 16

Expressions

Notes

1. أَ is the same as هل. It is written together with the word that follows it. The use of the particle أَ before a word with the article is undesirable.
2. The preposition إِلَى has the same phonetic features as عَلَى (lesson 15).

Exercise 5. Make at least 10 sentences using the words for the text of lesson 16.

Text of Lesson 16

١) هل قرأت امس درسا عربيا؟ نعم، قرأت درسا عربيا. وهل فهمت الكلمات في هذا الدرس؟ نعم، فهمت الكلمات فيه.
٢) أقرأت كتابا عن العراق؟ نعم، قرأت كتابا عربيا جديدا عن العراق. قرأت في ذلك الكتاب عن الشعب العراقي.
٣) كتبت عاملة عربية من بلد بعيد رسالة الى عاملة روسية. قرأت العاملة الروسية الرسالة منها.
٤) اين عملت المعلمة فى هذه السنة؟ عملت المعلمة في هذه السنة في موسكو. هل عملت في هذا المعهد؟ نعم، عملت فيه.
٥) هل عمل هذا المهندس في المعمل الجديد؟ نعم، عمل فيه. هل المعمل بعيد من المدينة؟ لا، هو قريب جدّا منها.
٦) اين جلس المعلم؟ جلس المعلم على مقعد في القاعة الكبيرة.
٧) أذهبت الى المكتبة اليوم؟ نعم، ذهبت اليها اليوم وقرأت هناك جريدة عربية جديدة وبعد ذلك ذهبت الى البيت.
٨) الى اين ذهب الاستاذ بعد العشاء؟ ذهب بعد العشاء الى المسرح.
٩) ماذا أكلت وماذا شربت؟ أكلت قليلا من اللحم وشربت كوبا من الشاي الحارّ.
١٠) أكل الولد الجبن وشرب الحليب من فنجان جميل جدّا وكسر الفنجان بعد ذلك. وهل الحليب على المائدة الآن؟ نعم، هو عليها.
١١) أسمعت الاذاعة عن الكتب الجديدة؟ نعم، سمعت الاذاعة عنها.

Exercise 6. a) Write down the text with vowel marks, translate it, give the transcription of the passage 12. b) Make a syntactic analysis of passage 2. c) Read the text observing the rules of the connecting hamza.

Exercise 7. Translate from English into Arabic using the direct object in the indefinite and definite states (the subject in both cases is definite).

1) I read a/the book. 2) You (m, sing) read a/the book. 3) You (f, sing) read a/the book. 4) He read a/the book. 5) She read a/the book about Iraq. 6) I wrote a/the letter. 7) You (m, sing) wrote a/the letter. 8) You (f, sing) wrote a/the letter to the teacher. 9) The engineer wrote a/the letter about the factory. 10) The farmer (f) wrote a/the letter. 11) The pupil (m) understood a/the lesson. 12) The pupil (f) understood a/the lesson. 13) Did you (m, sing) understand a lesson? 14) Did you (f, sing) understand a lesson? 15) Who worked in the factory? 16) Where did the engineer (f) work? 17) I sat with the teacher on a bench. 18) The worker (f) sat on a bench. 19) The comrade went in(to) the library. 20) Where did you go? 21) What have you (f, sing) eaten and what have you drunk? 22) Who broke the glass? 23) Did you hear (f, sing) the radio? 24) Yes, I heard the broadcast about the new books.