Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Notes

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Danya: مرحباً,اسمي دانيا.
May: و أنا مي.
Timothy: Timothy here! Beginner, Lesson 9 - He does it well. Hello and welcome to the Beginner Series at ArabicPod101.com where we study modern Arabic in a fun and educational format.
Danya: So brush up on the Arabic that you started learning long ago or start learning today. And join us for this lesson of ArabicPod101.
Timothy: Thanks for being here with us for this lesson. What did we cover last time?
May: Last time, we learned how to negate sentences with verbs in the imperfect tense.
Danya: That means we learned to say things like I don't know.
Timothy: Okay, let's hear a quick conversation.
Danya: أين الحمام؟
May: أنا آسفة, لا أعرف
Timothy: Okay, and the translation.
Danya: أين الحمام؟
Timothy: Where is the bathroom?
May: آسفة, لا أعرف
Timothy: I'm sorry, I don't know. So what are we going to cover today?
May: Today, we're talking about a famous Lebanese artist.
Danya: We're also learning third person singular forms of verbs.
Timothy: So we'll be able to say he sings, he dances and things like that.
Danya: That's right.
Timothy: Drastically improve your pronunciation with the voice recording tool in the premium learning center. Record your voice with a click of a button and play back what you record just as easily. This tool is a perfect compliment to the line-by-line audio. Let's get into today's conversation.
May: Two teenage girls are shopping in downtown Beirut. As they are looking around, they find someone famous.
Danya: Nada recognized him but Alya doesn't know who he is.
Timothy: So let's listen in on their conversation and see if we can pick out his name and where he's from.
May: This is a polite, casual conversation in standard Arabic.

Lesson conversation

ندى: هل تعرفين من هذا؟
عالية: لا، لا أعرف.
ندى: إنه مارسيل خليفة.
عالية: من هو؟
ندى: هو عازف رائع، ويغني جيدا أيضا.
عالية: من أين هو؟
ندى: هو من لبنان.
Eric: One more time with the translation.
ندى: هل تعرفين من هذا؟
Timothy: Do you know who that is?
عالية: لا، لا أعرف.
Timothy: No, I don't know.
ندى: إنه مارسيل خليفة.
Timothy: It's Marcel Khalife.
عالية: من هو؟
Timothy: Who's he?
ندى: هو عازف رائع، ويغني جيدا أيضا.
Timothy: He is a wonderful musician and he sings well too.
عالية: من أين هو؟
Timothy: Where's he from?
ندى: هو من لبنان.
Timothy: He's from Lebanon.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Timothy: Did you catch the name of the person they saw on the streets?
May: It was Marcel Khalife.
Timothy: So who is Marcel Khalife?
Danya: He is a Lebanese nationalist singer and عود player and that is the Arabic lute.
May: Marcel Khalife actually composes his own music, very talented musician.
Danya: A lot of his compositions have been played by famous orchestras around the world including the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra.
Timothy: So what makes him a nationalist singer?
May: He's associated with a Palestinian poet called Mahmoud Darwish who writes poems about nationalism and revolution.
Danya: Right. So he basically uses art as a means to stir crowds and encourage peace and at the same time he tries to recreate classic Arabic music.
Timothy: I'd like to hear some of his music. Is there a particular song you'd recommend?
Danya: There are really good albums for Marcel Khalife including one called Arabic Coffee Pot and Peace be With You, these are very famous albums. So if you go online and search for his music and his works, you'll find a lot of really great songs and hits.
Timothy: Do you think I'll find it on iTunes?
May: Yeah.
Danya: You might, probably, yeah.
Timothy: Okay, so check out the PDF where we'll have a short write of about Marcel Khalife's work and we'll post a comment with the link to his website.
KEY VOCABULARY AND PHRASES
Timothy: Now, let's look at the vocabulary used in this conversation. What's the first word?
Danya: من [natural native speed]
Timothy: Who?
Danya: من [slowly - broken down by syllable]. من [natural native speed]
Timothy: This word looks a lot like another word when written.
May: Yes. مَن is written in م ن just like the preposition مِن
Danya: In vowel text, you'll find the fatha written above for مَن and the kasra written below for مِن. So it's really not that hard.
Timothy: Okay. What about non vowel text?
May: Well, you can figure that out from context.
Danya: Yeah. It's pretty clear whether the sentence needs a question word or a preposition.
Timothy: Now, how do you use مَن?
May: You use it just like in English to ask who, من هو؟, who is he.
Danya: But it's not used in the middle of a sentence to refer back to someone again.
Timothy: What do you mean?
Danya: In English, we would say, for example, this is the man who makes me laugh, but in Arabic we say هذا هو الرجل الذي يضحكني.
Timothy: This is the man that makes me laugh.
Danya: Right.
Timothy: Okay. That leads us into our next word, a personal pronoun.
Danya: هو [natural native speed]
Timothy: He.
Danya: هو [slowly - broken down by syllable]. هو [natural native speed]
Timothy: In this conversation, they had already established to who they were talking about.
May: هل تعرفين من هذا؟
Danya: They're talking about هذا, that guy, that man.
Timothy: So maybe she's pointing at him. Since they already knew who they were talking about, they didn't need to point him out again.
Danya: Yeah, they just referred to him as هو.
Timothy: Now, we have a similar word.
May: إنه [natural native speed]
Timothy: He.
May: إنه [slowly - broken down by syllable]. إنه [natural native speed]
Timothy: What's the difference between إنه and هو?
Danya: Well basically, إنه consist of أنّ which is a particle used for emphasis. And it's combined with هو which has been contracted in the word to make إنه, so that is him referring to Marcel Khalife in the sentence.
Timothy: Okay. So if you want to emphasize that he is Marcel Khalife.
Danya: You would say إنه Marcel Khalife.
Timothy: But if you just want to say he is Marcel Khalife.
Danya: هو , Marcel Khalife.
Timothy: So can we do the same thing with هي ?
Danya: Right. And in this case, you would say إنها , so you could contract the هي to a هيَsound, إنها.
Timothy: What's the next word?
Danya: عازف [natural native speed]
Timothy: Player (of instruments).
Danya: عازف [slowly - broken down by syllable]. عازف [natural native speed]
Timothy: So Marcel is a player, huh?
Danya: No, that's not what I meant.
Timothy: Right. You mean he's a musician, like a player of instruments.
Danya: Right, exactly.
Timothy: Okay. So can this word be used for a soccer player?
Danya: No, it's only for music. It's basically just a word for someone who plays a musical instrument.
Timothy: Okay, what's the next word?
May: رائع [natural native speed]
Timothy: Wonderful.
May: رائع [slowly - broken down by syllable]. رائع [natural native speed]
Timothy: So that's kind of hard to say.
May: Yes, because of the hamza in the word, you have to make the hamza sound.
Danya: You're just going to have to practice with that sound I guess.
Timothy: Okay, well this is how I think about it. First, I say the first syllable and then I say the second one, رائع.
Danya: Right, you got it.
Timothy: What I do is I concentrate on the first syllable which is really easy را and I don't really worry about the hamza. It's just a break between the two syllables, so just stopping between the two syllables takes care of that, را. And then after a slight pause, I concentrate on the second syllable as ئع. So I pronounce the kasra, the E sound and I concentrate on tightening my throat to say ع. So ئع.
Danya: ئع.
Timothy: And then put in the two syllables together with the break, رائع.
Danya: Right.
Timothy: Okay, what's the next word?
Danya: يغني [natural native speed]
Timothy: He sings.
Danya: يغني [slowly - broken down by syllable]. يغني [natural native speed]
Timothy: Okay. And how about she sings?
Danya: تغني
Timothy: What's the next word?
May: جيدا [natural native speed]
Timothy: Good.
May: جيدا [slowly - broken down by syllable]. جيدا [natural native speed]
Timothy: In the previous lesson, we learned the word جيد as in جيد جداً.
May: Very good.
Timothy: So what's the difference between جيد and جيداً?
Danya: There really isn't a difference. It's the same word, it's just that we're pronouncing the تنيوين on the end.
Timothy: So the تنيون is just a grammatical marker. It makes an أون or آن or إن sound at the end of a word.
Danya: Right, absolutely. And people don't always pronounce the grammatical vocalizations. It's just a personal habit.
Timothy: Okay. Let's move on to today's grammar point.

Lesson focus

Timothy: Today's grammar point is forming verbs in the present third person singular. So we've already introduced the first and second person conjugations in previous lessons using the verb to study. Let's review, I study.
May: أدرس
Timothy: Masculine, you study.
May: تدرس
Timothy: Feminine, you study
May: تدرس
Timothy: We can hear how all the forms of the verb have the same stem, the same درس sound in the middle,أدرس, تدرس,تدرسين Now, let's hear the new form, he studies.
May: يدرس
Timothy: So to say, he studies, we just take the stem درس and instead of adding أ for first person or تَ for second person, we're going to add يَ.
May: يَدرس.
Timothy: Now, what about the feminine form, she studies?
May: تدرس
Timothy: So for the feminine form, we put تَدرس to the front of the stem, just like in the masculine second person. Let's hear how this grammar point was used in the dialogue.
May: يغني
Timothy: Now, the root of this word is غَنّي.
May: Right.
Timothy: That would make the first person غّنِي.
May: No, no, listen carefully. I said يُغني, not يَغني.
Timothy: So the first vowel is a damma and ؤ sound.
May: Right. A lot of verbs have fatha but this one has a damma.
Timothy: Okay, so let's hear this verb in all of its forms again, I sing.
May: أغني
Timothy: You sing, masculine.
May: تغني
Timothy: You sing, feminine.
May: تغنين
Timothy: He sings.
May: يغني
Timothy: She sings.
May: تغني

Outro

Timothy: That just about wraps things up for today. Stop by ArabicPod101.com and check out our new flashcards. You can choose to be prompted at your own level of Arabic reading whether it's un-vowel Arabic, Arabic with all the harakat or the Romanization. You can even switch your preferences right in the middle of the deck. So come by at ArabicPod101.com and let us know what you think. Until next time.
May: إلى اللقاء.
Danya: مع السلامة.

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