Beginner - Best and worst

Great lesson. I'm glad to have an opportunity to pick up colloquial terms that I wasn't taught in my classes. I'm wondering which term is used more frequently in everyday speech: يقدر or يستطيع for "can". Or do they have different meanings? Sometimes it's hard to know the shades of difference between words that are translated the same way to English... Thanks for any advice!

It is indeed (يقدر) that people use in the street. Both words have the same meaning, (يقدر) works in colloquial and classical while (يستطيع) is more classical.

In “Fruit juice” we had “afdal (ﺃﻓﺿﻞ) shay' (ﺸﺊ)”. Are ﺃﻓﺿﻞ and ﺃﺤﻠﻰ interchangeable?

Hi Desmond,

أفضل is more classical and it literally means better or best if it has a definite article or shay2 comes after, whereas أحلى literally means sweetest but it’s used colloquially a lot to have the same meaning as أفضل

اهلا و سهلا

Very nice lesson guys:)

Some comments according to lesson that might be difficult for beginners:)and I wanna sure if i
learnt them good .Any correction is welcome:)
I will use in my examples more "Shamee" slang(which i trying to learn it by myself )

a7laa احلى*the word comes from 7elwحلو means like sweet or beautiful ,nice
Example below:

قهوة حلوة (q)2ahwe 7elwa- sweetened coffee
احلى هدية a7laa hadeyya- a most beautiful gift

*دُنْيا -donya-world.The classical form is عَالَم
3alam.
Some colloquial expression that i know.

هيك الدنيا-heek ad-donya-that's is life.
صارت الدنيا برد-Saaret ad-donya bard-means like"It is getting cold.


* اسوء)comes from word سيئ"sayy2)-bad

العلاقات بينهم سيئة-al-3elaaq(2)aat beenhom sayy2a
Relations between them are poor.


*ايش-what? there are also other words heard like شو-shoo (the LEVANTINE) ايه-eih(EGYPTIAN)

*q(2)aSadقصد-to mean ,to intend

شو بتقصد بكلامك؟-shoo bteq(2)Sod be-kalaamak?What do u mean?

*q(2)adara قدر-can, to be able to

اذا بتقدر-idha bteq(2)der-if you can....

*jaab-جابto bring

جيبلي-jeeb-le -Bring it to me!!!

The rest i guess is quite easy
All the best hope it helps a bit also

تشارك

Thanks for the useful information, ArabicLover. I suspected there was a difference in register between the two variants, but I wasn't quite sure.

that helps me , arabiclover, I often feel lost when it comes to street arabic, since it is not written and I have to trust my impression of what I think was said.thank you.

أحلى شئ في الدنيا ھوالحب a question for wise ones here , what would be the meaning or lack of it , if I did not use the huwa ?

perhaps my question is not clear,I want to know if leaving out the pronoun huwa would produce a mishap .......any fear of an answer , ya Ehab?

Ahlan Berry, Yes removing the huwa would produce a mishap, it needs to be there. If you remove it, it’s like saying in English “Best thing in life love”. ‘Huwa’ serves the ‘is’ purpose in English

Oh, I didn't notice the question before, sorry.
Yes, if you remove (هو) and (ال) then you end up with an incomplete sentence just like what ArabicLover wrote.
However, if you remove (هو) only, like saying (أحلى شي في الدنيا الحب) then that would be fine and gives almost the same meaning.

thanks ehab and arabic lover, I am often not direct in my questions , an old cockney habit which does no good at all on the web .

hello iam newbie from oosaka ,japan,thanks for lesson

i'm a newbie too:) taking Arabic at UGA. I learned that the word for "best" is احسن
is that also commonly used?

Ahlan Stefanieov,

Yes, the word (a7san أحسن) is indeed commonly used as (best), in fact it literally means (best) while (a7laa أحلى) that we used in the lesson is more like (the sweetest).

We wish you having أحسن time in ArabicPod.

I have one major problem in standard Arabic (maybe, just maybe, you're already planning something for this), and that's the definite article ( ال ).

You said many verbs take the article after howa & heya (acting as is) and it seems verbal nouns usually do too.

MY QUESTIONS: Why do LOVE, HAPPINESS & SADNESS all take definite articles in the last sentence of this exercise? Does it have to do with following a verb?

And from a previous lesson, when you said "you must go to school", school took the definite article.

And finally, when you see a sign that says: mamnu3 AL-tad7'een, why does the noun, smoking, take the definite article?


Hopefully you can ease my troubled brain

Dear jacksonsgurufu,

I'll try to "ease your troubled brain". Several months ago I suggested that a podcast should be devoted to the problems associated with the use of the definite article in Arabic. Since these problems are relatively complex, Ehab and Mohamed may still be wondering what they ought to include or omit.

If you were a native speaker of French, the Arabic article wouldn’t bother you at all since Arabic usage closely resembles French usage in many respects. If you look closely at the words you’ve mentioned you’ll notice that some of them have certain features in common.

“Love”, “happiness” and “sadness” are all abstract nouns, and the sentences in which their Arabic equivalents occur are all generalisations. This is why the definite article has been used. This use of the article is termed “generic”.

If you consult a French grammar like Mansion’s excellent “Grammar of present-day French”, you’ll find that the same rule applies to words like “amour”, “bonheur” and “tristesse”. Mansion doesn’t use the term “generic”, but he draws a clear distinction between the particularising and the generalising functions of the definite article. His remarks could be applied directly to Arabic.

ﻤﺪﺭﺴﺔ is rather more difficult than words like ﺤﺯﻦ. “School” is a concrete noun, so it clearly doesn’t belong to the same category as “love” or “sadness”. In order to arrive at a better understanding of Arabic usage, we can begin by analysing English usage. In English we draw a distinction between “going to school” and “going to the school”. If we say that a child goes to the school, “school (+ article)” refers to a building, but if we say that a child goes to school, “school” (- article) assumes a more abstract meaning, for we mean that the child receives instruction on a regular basis. There may not even be a school building, for in poor African countries children are often taught in forest clearings.

In Arabic this distinction is unimportant (cf. the podcast entitled “You must”). It doesn’t matter whether you mean “go to school” or “go to the school”. In both cases the definite article is used. If you listen attentively to Arabs trying to speak English you’ll notice that they almost invariably make mistakes and say “he goes to the school” when they clearly mean “he goes to school”.

In this instance Arabic usage resembles French and German usage. In France people will say “Les enfants vont déjà à l’école”, and in Germany you’ll hear sentences like “Die Kinder gehen schon zur Schule”.

Desmond, you're my hero

This help with lessons is quite unprecedented.
I was attending a language school in Cairo several months ago & nearly every student would have a million questions to ask the teacher after class. But, as soon as the clock ticked 30 past, the teacher would happily inform us that any further instruction would be charged at 200LE/hour.
--Not to mention all the questions asked in class that would receive the usual 'insha'allah we will discuss this another time' reply.

Love your lessons, always very useful vocabulary and very helpful! :)