My children (nine and ten) and I loved this dialog. We wanted to hear Arabic spoken, and this is a beautiful way for our wish to be granted. The three of us also wish that every person on earth had a loving family and a safe home.

Really good lesson. Thank you.
There really are no excuses for poverty in today's world,
so,
I wish the same wishes.

Sallam

Nice dialogue, I just had a grammar question.

What would be the difference in meaning if one said this instead of the first sentence:
اتمنى ان توجد السلام في الدنيا كلها

how do you know when to you use لو instead of ان after اتمنى
?

Thanks for any advice!

Tomes

Hay Tomes,

Both sentences are correct

أتـمنّى لو كانت الدنيا كلها سلام
Or
اتمنى ان يوجد السلام في الدنيا كلها

However notice, I wrote يوجد and not توجد because it’s referring to السلام and السلام is a masculine word. The first sentence is like saying “I wish that the world was at peace” while the second sentence is like saying “I wish that peace exists all over the world”, so both are correct, just different ways of saying it.

Regarding when to use لو or ان after اتمنى, you can use لو with past tense فعل ماضي and sometimes with the present tense فعل مضارع but you can only use ان with present tense. For example, the first sentence كانت الدنيا is past tense meaning the world was, so you can’t use ان. If you wanted to use ان after اتمنى then you would change the sentence to
أتـمنّى أن تكون الدنيا كلها سلام

We didn’t use أتـمنّى لو لا يوجد فقر في العالم because in this case it wouldn’t make sense to put لو and لا together. When you put those two together it has an altogether different meaning. For example,
لولا خالدٌ لسافرت

Here لولا means “if it wasn’t for” So the whole sentence “If it wasn’t for 7’aled I would have travelled”

Hope this helps

شكرا جزيلا

فاهم كل شيء

Good explanation thanks, just different ways to say it. Perhaps a "conditional" lesson is in store then? I know that was always a difficult topic for Arabic learners learning the differences and how to use لو or اذا for conditional expressions. Keep up the great work! I'm referring this website to all my friends learning Arabic!

مع تحياتي
تومز

Fantastic website, for the people keen to learn Arabic for their personal language improvement - particularly for the expartiate work at middle east.
My appreciations for this website founder.
Request to increase the free login period.
THANKS AND BEST REGARDS
K.K.Murthi