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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.
As we’ve explained before, sentences in Arabic do not always include verbs; the sentence can be complete with two nouns or pronouns. The first noun is usually the subject and the second noun informs and describes the first one.
In this lesson, we will use this to talk about your age.
It’s normal for young people in Arab countries to ask each other’s age. Of course, it might be risky to ask people over 25!
If someone asks you Kam ʿumruka? it means “How old are you?”
Kam is a particle indicating or asking about the quantity: “how much?”
ʿumruka means “your age”
[slowly] Kam ʿumruka?
For a woman, it would be: Kam ʿumruki?
[slowly] Kam ʿumruki?
As you can see, there is no verb in this sentence again. Now you have to answer with your age, which is your chance to practice the numbers you learned again!
To answer the question, you can say ʿumrī + number like ʿumrī sittatun waʿišrūn, which means “My age is 26”. You can also say ʿumrī sittatun waʿišrūna sanah which means “I am 26 years old”.
sanah is literally “year”
In both cases, no verb is used but both sentences are considered complete grammatically. Please refer back to lessons 6 and 7 to review the rules for numbers.
Here are some examples.
“I am 18” -> ʿumrī ṯamāniyata ʿašara sanah
“I am 20” -> ʿumrī ʿišrūna sanah
“I am 25” -> ʿumrī ḫamsatun wa ʿišrūna sanah
“I am 40” -> ʿumrī arbaʿūna sanah
ʿumrī means “my age is”.
ʾarbaʿūna is “40”. We learned about numbers back in lessons 6 and 7.
And then we just add sanah at the end, which means “years”.
[slowly] ʿumrī ʾarbaʿūna sanah
Now it’s time for Carole’s Tips.
Sometimes young people do not ask about your age directly, but rather ask questions about your education and work and assume your age from the conversation.
In this lesson, we learned how to talk about your age. Next time we’ll learn how to talk about possessions.
I'll be waiting for you with the details in the next Al-ʿarabiyyah fi ṯalāṯi daqāʾiq.
ʾarākum fi al-ʾumṯūlati al-qādimah!

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