The second sentence in this podcast should be compared with the last sentence in the podcast entitled “Stingy”. In both cases we have to do with Arabic verbs denoting mental activity. The Arabic verbs are in the past tense (ﻋﺮﻓﺖ and ﻓﻬﻤﺖ, but they have to be rendered in English by present-tense verbs:

“How do you know?”
“I understand.”

Arabic speakers focus attention on mental processes, while English speakers highlight the results of these processes (knowledge and understanding). I suspect that the Arabic verbs under discussion belong to a lexical subset, and I wouldn’t be surprised if further examples were to crop up in later podcasts.

This is a very useful lesson for a number of reasons. Thanks, guys. I'm wondering about the word حكم used in this lesson, versus the word, حاسب used in the prior lesson "If you give me". What exactly is the difference? How would I decide to use one over the other?

I’m surprised that nobody has asked a question about the Arabic word for “woman”. ﻤﺮﺃﺓ (mar'a) is one of the strangest and most difficult words in the Arabic language. Unlike other nouns, it is always preceded by the definite article. When the article is removed, ﻤﺮﺃﺓ is replaced by ﺍﻤﺮﺃﺓ (imra'a). To make matters worse, it has an irregular plural (ﻨﺴﺎﺀ which no learner will ever be able to guess.

سلام,

Very nice lesson indeed for beginners
I am learning arabic for more than one year by myself and your podcasts helped me a lot in developing arabic language.Keep it up!!!

Some words listed here which might be difficult
عنصرية-racism
عَامَلَ-treat,handle
غَرِيب\ غُرَبَاءُ-strange\strangers,odds
أَجْنَبِيّ\اجانب-foreigner\foreigners
حَذِرَ-beware, be cautious
حكم على-to judge

Unfortunately i dont understand the question
about words حكم and حاسب but as far as i know
حكمto judge,sentence
example (,if something will be wrong\not understandable correct me ,please):
-they sentenced him to five years.
حمكواه خمس سنين

word حاسب
i guess you mean verb حسبwhich means to calculate ,count but also to reckon,assume

Here are my examples:
I will try to write them first in dialect second one classical

بتعرف تحسب؟-can you count?
حسبته اعجنبي-i thought\assumed he was a foreigner

Hope it helped a bit

All the best

Desmond do you mean
إِمْرَأَة \نِسْوَان???
singular\plural
Salaam

Dear Czarek25,

You'll find the plural of "imra'a" in the last sentence of the lesson entitled "Handsome guy". I've never seen "nisaa'" spelt with a "noon" at the end.

Tusbeh 'alaa chayr!

Hi there,

You really didn't find "neswaan".It is widely used in arabic language I guess.I met it many times to be sincere even as a beginner.
But maybe someone will decide if it is correct??

Salaam: )

Thanks for drawing my attention to this form, Czarek25. I've just run a Google search which has yielded some interesting results. There is a music video entitled "neswaan", and there are quite a lot of written texts where this form occurs. However, the grammatical status of "neswaan" seems to be rather uncertain. On one website it is described as a dual form, but in "Wiktionary" "neswaan" and "nisaa" are classed as synonyms. If this information is correct, the Arabic word for "woman" has two singular forms and two plural forms. Perhaps Ehab and Mohamed can shed some light on this question.

Fine, I really enjoyed following the discussion from day one.
To cover the issue of (woman), in the singular form, both (مرأة) and (إمرأة) mean (woman). However, the word (مرأة) can describe the type of women too unlike (إمرأة). For instance, you can say (حزب المرأة) which is (Women's party - as in political party) and here (مرأة) describes women as one type or gender. Notice you don't say (حزب الإمرأة) as (إمرأة) is specific to describe one woman in singular form only.

The plural form is even more interesting, we have few words to describe Women. Words like (نساء) and (نسوة) are widely classical forms that you read in modern articles in books and newspapers. The word (نسوان) also is another way to say (women) and it is considered to be more colloquial these days though it is a classical word if you look at the history of Arabic where you can find it in old Arabic poems.
Moreover, the word (حريم) describes women of the family, though these days people even use it to say women in general not just in a family.

To comment on the plural form, because it is (broken plural جمع تكسير) you can find this diversity of forms and all are considered right which is very normal in jam3 attakseer.

Thanks for your very helpful and detailed answer, Ehab. I’ll just add three remarks:

ﺍﻠﻨﺴﺎﺀ (Al-nisaa) is the title of the fourth sura of the Qur’an.

ﺤﺮﻴﻢ (hariim) and Engl. “harem” are “false friends” (faux amis) since Engl. “harem”, unlike ﺤﺮﻴﻢ, does not merely denote (a) the female members of a family or (b) a secluded part of a house allotted to women in a Muslim household. It is often used humorously to describe the female followers of a charismatic man, and it is occasionally even applied to polygamous animals (cf. definition 3 in the article devoted to “harem” in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

The problems posed by the grammatical peculiarities of ﻤﺮﺃﺓ and ﺍﻤﺮﺃﺓ show that there is a real need for an Arabic dictionary geared to the needs of European learners. We need something like the Collins COBUILD Dictionary, a reference work packed with example sentences, collocations and detailed usage notes.

I had a question. I noticed when looking at words if it was because of the English keyboard, but I noticed some numbers in the words. Do you speak with those numbers?

These numbers are actually to replace some of the letters that don't have equivalent in English. Best thing to do is to search for the word (pronunciation) in our Lessons page, and just watch the Visual Tutorial that comes with the lesson (Letter pronunciation).

Bettawfeeq (Good luck)

I learned the word for 'Lady' or 'woman' in a Vocabulearn list as 'harmat'. I suspect the plural maybe 'harmaat'? I remember the lesson for 'shakluh wasseem' (#125)& the term 'alnesaa2', but I've learned the word for 'woman' as isseyidat', which maybe is Egyptian? Anyway, 'harmat' seems like a good word to remember for English speakers, as it looks to serve as a warning to those who dare cross the line of not respecting a woman is due for some 'harm (at)'

However, I do find it interesting to see the different forms of usage of the hamzat. Here the hamzat is resting on an alif for the singular form of 'almar2ah', other places it rests on 'noon' without a dot, and in other places like the word for water, 'ma'a' it is isolated, or it be connected like a loop at the end as in the word for 'with'...or it could no rest on anything yet connect as in the word for 'appointment' maw3ed...does one have to memorize these different forms or is there a special spelling rule for this? Sometimes one can even see the hamzat resting above consonant...

Vladimer, I think the best way to answer you is to dedicate a specific lesson about writing hamzah (ء) because it is a topic on its own and requires some details. So keep it up with ArabicPod and you'll find the answer in special lesson inshallah.

What is the etymological root of the word عنصري (racist) and how long has it been in the Arabic language?

ﻋﻨﺼﺮﻱ is a nisba adjective derived from ﻋﻨﺼﺮ, which means “race” or “component”. As far as I can ascertain, ﻋﻨﺼﺮ is not used in the Qur’an. At any rate, it is not mentioned anywhere in Badawi/Haleem, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur’anic Usage (Leiden: Brill 2008).

Wow, thank you Desmond. I thought it was interesting that this word was not a borrowing from another language, but I suppose it makes sense that a word like this would be derived from Arabic roots - it's interesting that the same is not true for the word democracy, but is true for words like Zionism or socialism

“Socialism” is ﺍﺸﺘﺮﺍﻜﻴﺔ. This is a derivative of ﺍﺸﺘﺮﺍﻚ, which can mean “participation”, “partnership”, “collaboration” or “subscription”.

“Zionism” is ﺼﻬﻴﻭﻨﻴﺔ. This is a derivative of ﺼﻬﻴﻭﻦ (Zion). The Hebrew and Arabic words for “Zion” are very similar. Mount Zion is “Har Tsion” in Hebrew and “jabal (ﺠﺒﻞ sahyoun (ﺼﻬﻴﻭﻦ in Arabic.