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Lesson Transcript

Marḥaban ǧamīʿan, ʾanā Carole! Hi everybody! I’m Carole.
Welcome to ArabicPod101.com’s Al-ʿarabiyyah fi ṯalāṯi daqāʾiq. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Arabic.
In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to say “to be” in Arabic. We’ll also go over how to talk about your nationality.
When you meet a new person in the Arab countries, they might ask you Min ʾayna ʾanta? which is the equivalent of "Where are you from?"
Unlike other languages, Arabic sentences can be complete without any verb. So in the sentence Min ʾayna ʾanta? min means “from”, ʾayna is “where” and ʾanta is “you”. No verb is needed for the sentence to be complete.
You’re familiar with the feminine and maculine versions of the words, so in this case if you’re a girl you will be asked : Min ʾayna ʾanti?
ʾanti is the feminine of ʾanta or “you”.
Here you could answer “I am from + country”, or ʾanā min (…)
For example “ I am from Italy” is ʾanā min īṭālyah
To return the question you can simply say Wa ʾanta? which is "And you?" for a guy, and Wa ʾanti? for a girl.
Another way of asking someone where they are from is Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuka? or “What is your nationality?”
mā is “what”, hiya can be translated as “is” but is not a verb, and ǧinsiyyah is “nationality”. By replacing the -h with -tuka on the ending, it becomes “your nationality”.
Of course, if the person is a girl, we should ask Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuki?
All together it's Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuka?
[slowly] Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuka?
Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuki?
[slowly] Mā hiya ǧinsiyyatuki?
Answering both questions we learned is very easy! You just say ʾanā , which means "I am", then your nationality.
For example: ʾanā amrīkī
I am American.
[slowly] ʾanā amrīkī
Just replace “ʾamrīkī” with your own nationality.
"I am German" is ʾanā almānī
"I am Italian" is ʾanā ʾīṭālī
"I am Brazilian" is ʾanā barāzīlī
Be careful, because this is how you refer to your nationality if you are male. For the feminine form, you have to add -yyah at the end of the nationality.
For example, if you are an American woman, you will say: ʾanā ʾamrīkīyyah
German women say:
ʾanā almānīyyah
For Brazilian women it is:
ʾanā barāzīlīyyah
and so on.
Now it’s time for Carole’s tips.
Be careful because in Arabic, country names have a gender, so for example, Italy and France are feminine and Portugal and Morocco are masculine.
In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities.
Next time we’ll learn how to talk about locations, again without using a verb.
I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Al-ʿarabiyyah fi ṯalāṯi daqāʾiq!
ʾilā al-liqāʾi qarīban!
See you soon!

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