عربي Arabic 1

The table below summarizes what you will be expected to learn in Arabic, level 1.

Pronouns

Demonstratives

هذا

هذا البيت
this is the house.

"It" and "is"

There is no "is" in Arabic. A is/am/are B is just A B in Arabic, with B conjugated to match A.

There is no non-human pronoun "it" in Arabic. Instead, use هُوَ (he) and هِيَ (she) to refer to male or female nouns.

There is no non-human pronoun "they" in Arabic.

هو and هي are used to refer to non-human groups (including animals). The non-human things are referred to as a singular group. Only use هم and أنتم when referring to groups of people.

Verbs

Main verbs vs non-main verbs: the ب prefix.

الفُصحى: لي الشامي: !لي المصري: لِيَّ

الفُصحى: عَندي الشامي: !عَندي المصري: عِندي

Nouns

Adjectives

Prepositions

في and ب

In الفُصحى formal and المصري Egyptian Arabic, في means in with respect to space and time. In الشامي Levantine Arabic, في is used for time and ب is used spatially. (Egyptian Arabic uses ب to refer to time in بالنهار in the daytime and at night.) However, note that ب is not its own word but serves as a prefix.

Adverbs

Conjugation

Verb and preposition conjugation

Note that in الشامي and المصري verb conjugation, the ا alif is silent in the final وا suffix (when conjugating أنتم and هم).

Noun and adjective conjugation

Question particles

Question particles go at the beginning of the sentence.

However, in the Egyptian dialect they can go at the end. In any case, when a question particle and a preposition are paired up, the preposition always comes first.

Questions usually have a rising intonation, while statements usually have a falling or flat intonation.

However, different regions and people might have different intonations and it is best to simply listen carefully and pick up on local customs. In some cases, as in English, simply saying a statement with a rising intonation is enough to turn it into a question.

ماذا

ماذا يشرب؟
what's he drinking?

Plurals

مُفرَد (singular) is abbreviated م جَمع (plural) is abbreviated ج

Because Arabic has so many irregular plurals, it is best to memorize the singular and plural at once when learning new words. Masculine plurals encompass both genders in all but the most formal written Arabic. For example, طلاب (students) could mean a male, female or mixed group of students.

The ين and ون suffix.

The ين and ون suffix is used in many different instances. There are fine grammatical rules dictating when ون or ين are used in formal Arabic, but in spoken Arabic ون is never used (ين takes its place).

An inanimate plural noun (whether masculine or feminine) is followed by a single feminine adjective.

Broken plurals

Dialogue

Add لا or ما before a verb to make it negative.

أو equals "or"

و أنا أيضاً and me also

مِن أينَ أنت؟
from where are you?
(مِن أينَ = from where)

أنا مِن لبنان

مَن أنت؟
who are you?

أنا محمد
I'm Mohammed.

كَم؟ كام؟ how many?