Beginner - Shall we swap

salam alaikum Ehab wa Muhammad,
I have been trying to learn arabic for a long time and your site with the help of Allah i belive is the best way i cam learn this beautifull languange.

I would be greatfull if you guys please clarified a few quenstions.
first my fathers is of yemeni decent and i was wondering what dialect of arabic is spoken in yemen.

secondly is it right to sayممكن تستقبل نص عربي

مع سلام

Wa alaikum salam,
Welcome to the site... The Yemeni dialect is almost a dialect of its own, but is very similar to the Khaleeji dialect. Perhaps we'll dedicate a podcast one day to language solely used by Yemenis.

Yes you can say

ممكن تستقبل نص عربي؟
Mumkin tastaqbil na9 3araby?
Can you receive Arabic texts?

salaam,

I just joined. Why would you say,
وأنا ما تعجبني كيكتي ?

That is so confusing to me? Because the فاعل ,
of the verb , is the Cake? Why isn't a word like :
حبب used?

kind regards

Salaam pomegranate,

Welcome to ArabicPod. To answer your question, I could tell you that the literal meaning of (تعحب) is (it impresses, wonders or amazes), so we really say (this cake impresses me), and that is why you see the cake coming as (Subject - فاعل).

Hope that explains it now.

Shukran! One last thing brother. How do I know which of the exercises are standard Arabic and which are colloquial?

We normally mention in the lesson whether it is colloquial or classical. So I suggest you listen to the lessons before trying the exercise. All the best.

I had a quick question, can you say la tu3jibuni instead of ma tu3jibuni would that still make sense. Because I remember in previous lesson about Suzanne being ill mannered you guys used the phrase la tu3jibuni Suzanne. So are there special occasions where we use la instead of ma?

@jamalbintil4, Yes you can say 'la tu3jibuni', usually the word 'laa' is used to negate verbs in classical, while 'maa' is used in colloquial.

ohhh okay thanks Moshaya.
I just had that lingering question and you cleared it up for me..Shukran Jazillan

Hi guys,
nice and easy lesson.
I guess the final question was "what's your favourite cake?", but I wonder why you used هو, I thought كيكة was feminine.

Good point. (كيكة) means (a cake), it is a feminine word and it describes a piece of cake. The word (كيك) describes the type of cake in general and it is used as the plural form of (cakes), and most importantly you treat it as a masculine word, so you say (هذا الكيك لذيذ). This is similar to (an apple تفاحة) while the type of apples in general is (تفاح) and it is treated as a masculine word, so you would say (هذا التفاح غالي). Hope that explains why we used (هو) with (كيك).

Thanks Ehab, I understand now.
By the way, my favourite cake is cheesecake :-P