Learn how to use the verb "to go"
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| 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 use Arabic adjectives easily. |
| In this lesson we will start a series of lessons dedicated to the most common Arabic verbs, the ones you will certainly hear all the time! |
| The first verb in our series will be ḏahaba, which means "to go". Of course, we will use this word along with many different destinations. |
| You will see that in Arabic you have to use an appropriate linking word to connect ḏahaba to your destination. |
| Let’s start with an example in the present tense “Where do you go everyday?” |
| ʾayna taḏhabu kulla yawm? |
| Let’s break down this question: |
| ʾayna is “where” |
| taḏhabu is the 2nd person of the singular of the verb ḏahaba meaning “do you go?” |
| kulla is “every” and yawm is “day” |
| So now, let’s see how to use the verb ḏahaba |
| in the present tense. |
| - To use it to express a habit: |
| ʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-ǧabal kulla yawm. |
| “I go to the mountain everyday.” |
| ʾaḏhabu is “I go”, ʾilā is “to”, al-ǧabal is “the mountain”, kulla is “every” and “yawm” is “day.” |
| - To talk about the present, if a child is asking his mother if he should go to the mountain now: |
| Hal ʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-ǧabal? |
| “Do/Should I go to the mountain?” |
| By adding a time phrase to the sentence, it can also be transformed into the future |
| Hal ʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-ǧabal ḫilāla ʿuṭlat nihāyati al-ʾusbūʿ? |
| “Should I go to the mountain during the weekend?” |
| Hal is “do”/”Should” |
| ʾaḏhabu is “I go” |
| ʾilā al-ǧabal is “to the mountain” |
| and as we learned before, ḫilāla ʿuṭlat nihāyati al-ʾusbūʿ is “during the weekend”. |
| As in English where you can use the present continuous tense to talk about the future, you can do the same in Arabic too. |
| So imagine if someone asks you ʾayna sataḏhabu ḫilāla alʿuṭlah? That means "Where are you going for the holidays?" |
| So if you are going to the beach, for example, you will say saʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-šāṭiʾ |
| [slowly] saʾaḏhabu ʾilā al-šāṭiʾ |
| Means “I will go to the beach” |
| So let’s break down this answer: |
| First we had: |
| saʾaḏhabu which is "I am going..." |
| It is the 1st person form of the verb ḏahaba, "to go" in future indicative tense, because the sa at the beginning means it is in the future. |
| After it was ʾilā which is the connection between the verb and your destination, so it’s like "to" in English. It’s unchanged whatever the destination’s gender is. |
| Finally we had al-šāṭiʾ which is a noun that means “the beach”. |
| saʾaḏhabu takes the same form as the present ʾaḏhabu but with a sa- before it; it is the same for the rest of the persons. |
| Now it’s time for Carole’s tips. |
| We learned before how to say, “will go” but in Arabic, we often use ḏāhibun which means “going” now or in the future but is not a verb. It can be translated as the present participle ‘going’ of the verb ‘to go’. |
| For example, if someone asks you "Where are you going?" ʾilā ʾayna ʾanta ḏāhibun? You can say ʾanā ḏāhibun ʾilā al-ǧabal, which means “I am going to the mountain (now). |
| If we add a time phrase it can mean a plan for the future like ilā ʾayna ʾanta ḏāhibun ġadan? |
| “Where are you going tomorrow?” |
| Of course we can also say ʾilā ʾayna sataḏhabu ġadan ? |
| So, in this lesson, we learned how to use the verb ḏahaba and the correct linking word with it to talk about your destination. |
| Next time we’ll learn another very useful verb, faʿala. |
| Do you know what this Arabic verb means? I’ll be waiting for you in the next Al-ʿarabiyyah fi ṯalāṯi daqāʾiq to explain! |
| ʾilā al-liqāʾi qarīban! |
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