I have had the privilege of visiting many homes of Arabic friends. It’s true that their generosity is astonishing. One time, I saw a friend wearing a pretty bracelet, and I commented, “Oh, your bracelet is pretty.” To my surprise she gave it to me! And wouldn’t take no for an answer. This was a long time ago…I learned since then to be careful about what comments I make, because I didn’t want anyone to part with their valuable objects.

I appreciate all of the exercises you give in the lesson. Keeping track of the genders of subjects and objects is tricky, so the more repetition we hear, the better.

We used to have a cat (a female), and my daughter used to tease her a lot. So my husband would say to her, “Khalliha! Khalliha!” (”Let her go! Let her go!”) Here you can see the pattern of female object, and the verb addressed to a female…of course, I’m not sure if “khalli” is a real Arabic word or a dialectical one

I’ve also wanted to comment on this whole generosity issue in the Arab world
Yes, it’s true what Danya and Mai have told you on the podcast, it would be considered REALLY rude if someone was standing with a group while eating something and didn’t offer any to the rest of the group.

Also it would be considered gluttonous if you accepted on the first offer, you should say “no, thanks, I’m really full, thank you” and they will keep offering you till either you take some, or till they get tired and give up!

Some people would go as far as to buy everybody something to eat or drink, like at a café or a restaurant, sometimes people would insist to pay for the whole group, and they’d get upset if you didn’t accept that…

One of my arabic friends says that “-hamza-جا” is a verb that means “to come”.
Is this a real verb? and apparently the plr. form of it is جا؛ت (with a hamza in the middle)
Have any of you guys heard of this?

Dear APOD, I’m trying very hard to find the right words to compliment and thank you for keeping me “with” you up to this point. Your explanations are so clear, even for points which are difficult for me.

I like the way you are not afraid to use words from outside the lesson vocabulary to demonstrate declensions. I suspect that you choose these words with great care, choosing words that will sound extra clear to your students as they are modified. Thank you!

At the moment, I seem to be discovering things about Arabic script all the time. For example, in the Lesson 3 pdf, the word “cat” —

— in one of your examples puzzled me because I couldn’t seem to find the

just before the final

, which seemed to be indicated by the transliteration and also by the audio. Is the answer perhaps that the “tooth” of that final [rlt]ه[/rtl] can be the tooth for the

? Because I seem to see a slightly bigger blob above that, compared with the one after the jamiila’, is that because there are two dots there?

I hope my question didn’t sound too ridiculous! Another question I have concerns the spelling of (unvowelled) HaaDHa and HaaDHihi. The “Haa” sounds long, is there an alif there? But when I type

, it doesn’t look right. Thank you so much for helping to clear up my newbie questions!

The word قطّة - qiTTa - (cat) is spelled qaaf, kasra, Taa’, shadda, fatHa, taa’ marbuta.
So taa’ marbuta means “tied taa’”. The taa’ marbuta on the end is silent because your tongue is tied, and therefore cannot pronounce the taa’. But if we attach (and pronounce) a vowel to the end to emphasize the grammatical role of the word, then the taa’ marbuta is pronounced.

We also saw the taa’ marbuta at the end of صديقة - Sadiiqa - (female friend). When we attached the pronoun ي - ii (my) to the end we got صديقتي - Sadiiqatii - (my friend). In this case, the taa’ marbuta became untied, and was even written as a regular taa’. The taa’ marbuta only exists on the end of a word.

Grammatical endings are often dropped in rapid speech because they are usually not necessary for understanding the meaning of a sentence. But if you do hear them, they can be a very useful tool for discovering the taa’ marbuta.

By the way, the taa’ marbuta always follows a fatHa - a - (at least I’ve never come across a counterexample) and usually means that a word is feminine. So if you hear a feminine word end with a then it’s a pretty good bet that the word ends with a taa’ marbuta.

Thanks, Timothy. That was a speedy response. I still have a bit of my question left: the transliteration given in your pdfs is: “al-qiTTatu jamiila.

So I didn’t imagine that there is a

there, right? Sorry to be unclear in my earlier question, but what happened is that when I typed it on my Mac, there was an additional “tooth” for the ت . In addition to the “tooth” of the final ه. In other words, the two dots of the “baa” did not appear over the tooth of the final ه, rather, the ligature sprouted an additional tooth just after the ذ .

However, the standard APOD101 font uses the “tooth” of that final ه as the tooth for the ت, so the “baa” is reduced to two dots and there is no need for an additional tooth. I am sounding even more coherent now, aren’t I?

And regarding the “haa” of “haaDHa”, so there’s no alif after the ه ? In other words, the “haa” looks long when written in roman letters, but it’s actually just the “included” vowel of the ه ? h+DH+a, and not h+a+DH+a ? Thank you for your patience.

I did forget to type the taa marbuta, sorry about that!

ُTimothy, I got it, no need to answer my silly question in my last 2 posts, because now I know where the source of my misunderstanding. http://www.arabicpod101.com/wp-images/smilies/icon_redface.gif

Essentially, I hadn’t properly understood/ had forgotten this point made in the Beginner Lesson #2 pdf:

“The word صديقة means a female friend. The silent taa’ marbuta (ة)
becomes a pronounced taa’ (ت) when you attach a suffix to it.”

I remember reading those words then and thinking, “Suffix?”, but I didn’t linger.

When you pointed out the “damma” and gave that great explanation about how the addition of the vowel turned the “taa marbuta” into a voiced “taa”, I didn’t connect “suffix” with “vowel sign”. Probably because I had this strange (and mistaken) idea in my head that vowels were something involving a combination of letters like “waw” or “alif” or “yaa”. I think it’s because I started learning the script with a textbook that emphasized unvowelled Arabic.

Do I feel foolish now! So the القطة is “al-quiTTa” without the “damma”, but the addition of the damma/suffix/vowel sound in that crowded blob part together with the two dots of the “taa marbuta” supplied the “-tu” sound. Ah. Sorry Timothy!

Allright! You’ve got it!
طاولة - Taawila - table
طاولتي - Taawilatii - my table

How do you say “Do you want to keep it with you?” to a female?
Is it “Hal tureedeen an tubqeehi ma’aki?” - ??