Beginner - Is that seat taken

Let’s imagine a similar situation in a train compartment! Would you say “hal hadh(a) al-maq'ad mahjuuz?” ﻤﺤﺟﻮﺰ means “reserved” or “booked”, but I suspect that it might be appropriate here. ﻤﻘﻌﺪ would probably be the correct word for “seat”. I noticed that in the Arabicpod video about a flight to Marocco ﻤﻘﻌﺪ was used for a seat on a plane.

That is right Desmond. Chair is (kursi كرسي) and Seat is (maq3ad مقعد).

Thanks for confirming my hypothesis, Ehab. I apologise for the typo. I should have written “Morocco”.

Like their Arabic equivalents, “chair” and “seat” are quite difficult words. In English any kind of chair can be described as a seat, but the seats we find in buses, trains and aircraft are never called chairs.

Judging by what I’ve seen and heard on the Net, ﻜﺮﺴﻲ denotes a movable seat for one person. ﻤﻘﻌﺪ, by contrast, is an immovable seat which may be occupied by more than one person. It denotes a seat that is screwed to the floor of a bus, a train or an aircraft, but it can also denote the baby seat of a bicycle. For security reasons, a “maq'ad (ﻤﻘﻌﺪ) al-tifl (ﺍﻠﻄﻓﻞ)” (pronounced “maq'adu tifl”), like the seats on a bus, is immovable.

Although ﻜﺮﺴﻲ often corresponds to “chair” and ﻤﻘﻌﺪ often corresponds to “seat”, I think it would be dangerous to set up one-to-one correspondences between the Arabic and English terms under discussion. I can think of at least one case in which ﻜﺮﺴﻲ does not correspond to “chair”. English-speaking Arabists speak of “the seat of hamza”, and the corresponding Arabic term (ﻤﺼﻄﻠﺢ) is ﻜﺮﺴﻲ. I think the “seat of hamza” can also be termed “nabirah”, but I’m not sure how this word is spelt.

As I said in the second paragraph of this comment, there is often a hierarchical relationship between “seat” and “chair”. “Seat” is a hyperonym (a very general term), while “chair” is a hyponym (a very specific term). Thus “chair”, “stool”, “sofa”, “couch” and “bench” are all co-hyponyms of “seat”. Does a similar relationship exist between the two Arabic nouns we have been discussing? Could benches or couches, for instance, be termed ﻤﻘﺎﻋﺪ (maqaa'id)?

I think you're correct, DESMOND, that it's unwise to assume English and Arabic have equivalent distinctions - here or anywhere else.

I always tend to turn to Hans Wehr first and I notice that he gives both "chair" and "seat" as a meaning for both مقعد and كرسي. On top of that, it's interesting that كرسي comes from a root that means "to lay the foundation of." Kind of ironic when we consider the general meaning of "chair" as you've already described.

That said, I think we can generally use "كرسي" to mean something moveable that we might sit upon and "مقعد" to mean a non-moveable seat in a plane or train or whatever.

Thanks for your reply, Sierra. I’m glad we see eye to eye.

I can see the connection between a chair and a foundation. A house “sits” on a foundation as a person sits on a chair.

There is another word for “foundation” that comes from another root. The word I have in mind is ﻗﺎﻋﺪﺓ, which is derived from an active participle meaning “sitting” or “seated”, and which has now found its way into English via the international media. In the podcasts devoted to Arabic grammar Ehab has often used this word in the sense of “rule”, but it can also mean “base”, “stronghold” or even “database”. Several months ago I discovered a website where someone said it could mean “toilet seat”, and some other people who were interested in the term said it was a toilet bowl or a toilet with a seat as opposed to a mere hole in the ground. Is the word ﻗﺎﻋﺪﺓ ever used in that sense in your part of the world?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Arabs had no generic term for objects like chairs, sofas, stools or benches. There are lexical gaps in every language, and they often give rise to prickly translation problems. In German, for instance, we have the word “Schrank”, a hypernym which can denote any piece of furniture that has drawers or shelves (e.g. a cupboard, a kitchen cabinet, a tallboy, a wardrobe or a bookcase). When I have to translate “Schrank” into French I can sometimes use a specific term like “armoire” or a generic term like “meuble(s) de rangement”, which is comparatively rare and technical, but which will be understood by any native speaker of French. Finding an English translation equivalent for “Schrank” is quite another matter, however, and the translation process sometimes involves bizarre and uncomfortable linguistic contorsions. I have to try to make my English text look natural so that people from English-speaking countries will never suspect that they are reading a translation.

Hi usual gang,

In addition to the descriptions above, I usually see the word مقعد used in the political/organizational sense to mean a "place or position" in the body politic or organization. Such as a "seat in Parliament", مقعد في المجلس . Has anyone else seen this?

To go off in another direction with translations, I was wondering how interchangeable the words فاضي and فارغ really are? You mentioned they can both be used to mean in the sense of a chair being "unoccupied, free, empty", but can they be used intangibly like with the concept of time?

I have heard عندك وقت فارغ؟
"Are you free/Do you have free time?"

But I have not heard it used with فاضي, is that correct or can they both be used? If so, then when do they differentiate in meaning from "empty, free, available".

Of course I would love to hear the Lebanese dialect for "Are you free?"

Thanks.

Tomes

In the podcast about handwriting the adjective ﻓﺎﻀﻲ is used figuratively in the expression “kalaam (ﻜﻼﻢ) faady (ﻓﺎﻀﻲ)”, which means “empty talk”. If we had a complete list of the nouns that collocate with ﻓﺎﻀﻲ it would be easier to decide when it can be replaced by other adjectives.

There is another problem which has never been discussed in the podcasts, and which is often overlooked even by professional linguists. Some adjectives are subject to very severe constraints. The English adjective “vacant” is a case in point. In a political context “vacant” can be used attributively or predicatively. You can say “This seat is vacant” or “Some ministers are still on the look-out for a vacant seat” (i.e. a seat in the House of Commons). In other contexts, however, “vacant” is only used attributively. If you’re talking about a train you can say “We looked around the compartment, but could not find any vacant seats”, but if you discover a vacant seat and want to know whether you can sit down on it you have to ask the other passengers “Is this seat taken?”, “Is this seat free?”, “Is somebody sitting here?” or “Is anybody sitting here?” You can’t say “Is this seat vacant?” That would sound stupid because anyone who is not blind can see whether someone is sitting on a seat. Non-native speakers of English might retort that “Is somebody sitting here?” also sounds stupid, but this question is considered acceptable by native speakers of English because under normal circumstances it is not interpreted literally.

great lesson again with a lot of added value in the comment/discussion part - very enriching .Thanks to all the (regular) contributors.

I am exploring different part of your website during your trial membership. thanx

Apologies for the delayed reply. DESMOND, I will look into the uses of قاعدة here and get back to you, so please check this page again mid-next week.

I think you make a very good point when you mention the idea of "literal interpretation" - language is ultimately a code by which we communicate meaning. We listen not only to words but to our own sense of the the meanings that words carry. So when someone asks "Is somebody sitting?" we don't interpret it literally because then it wouldn't make sense; we know what it means from having heard it dozens of times before in the same or similar contexts.

TOMEST05, you're correct about the use of مقعد, though I think it retains a more concrete meaning, particularly of course when related to parliament.

In standard, you can use both فاضي and فارغ to mean either empty or free (as in time). In Levantine, you can use both to mean "empty" but you'll want to stick with فاضي when it comes to time. Actually, if you want to ask, say, if someone is available tomorrow, you can just say انت فاضي بكرا؟ so it translates very easily from English.

Thank you PLOP for the positive feedback and I'd like to second the praise of the contributors.

could you explain the use of yumkin and mumkin......in chat I see" mumkin chat ?etc."....but here it seems to have declined into y....mkin...ni the ni is clear for me(I)....thanks Y as third person is also clear...but i do not really know when to mumkin or yumkin.....hope you get my drift...great lesson specially the numbers which are hard for me.

Thank you for your reply, Sierra. I’m sure your Lebanese informants will be able to provide tantalizing insights into contemporary Arabic usage.

Berry has asked a very interesting question. ﻴﻤﻜﻦ and ﻤﻤﻜﻦ are both used to express modality, and they can be rendered by English verb forms like “could” and “might” as well as by modal adverbs such as “perhaps” and “maybe”. There are, however, fundamental differences between the two Arabic words under discussion.
“Yumkin” is a verb, while “mumkin” is an adjective. As a result, they do not occur in the same syntactic patterns.

When “mumkin” occurs in the pattern “min al-mumkin 'an + SUBORDINATE CLAUSE” (it is possible that + SUBORDINATE CLAUSE), it can be rendered idiomatically with the aid of English modals such as “can” and “may”. Thus “it is possible that he will come” can be transformed into the more natural-sounding “He may come”. Sometimes “mumkin” expresses probability, and it is also used in phrases like “fy (ﻓﻲ) 'asra' (ﺃﺴﺮﻉ) wakt (ﻮﻗﺖ) mumkin (ﻤﻤﻜﻦ)” (as soon as possible).

“Yumkin” is a much more difficult word because it is a verb form (present tense, 3rd person singular, masculine). It occurs in three patterns: (1) yumkin + verbal noun (masdar), (2) yumkin + 'an + verb, (3) yumkin + bi- + verb (an asyndetic construction).

In Egyptian Arabic “yumkin” is replaced by “yimkin”, but the two words are spelt the same way.

“Yumkin” has a feminine counterpart which is pronounced “tumkin”. Some educated native speakers of Arabic claim they have never heard of ﺘﻤﻜﻦ, but a recent corpus study carried out by Dilworth B. Parkinson shows that this verb form occurs quite frequently in Arabic newspapers. Thus, for instance, is can be found in sentences where the subject is a verbal noun (+ definite article) like ﺍﻹﺸﺎﺮﺓ. It should, however, be noted that ﺘﻤﻜﻦ is not used in Egypt and is rarely employed in Kuwait and Morocco.

the code idea of saida sierraprasada is where i wish to go......the meaning under the surface structure....since arabic is ism , fa3l, sarf...mmkin could really be adjective , adverb, preposition , marker, uncle tom cobbly and all.......but th e phrase i am thinking of in chat is "mmkn ntaraf?" can we chat ..get to know each other......i assume under the surface is hal mmkin ntaraf m3i .....( I use chomski a lot)my request id for one of the NATIVE SPEAKERS to help me crack the code, elias etc ,,,,could you help me out here ? thanks for your imput desmond

is.instead of id..löl..

Several points need to be made here:

First, it doesn’t make sense to say “arabic (sic!) is ism, fa3l, sarf”. A language does not consist of parts of speech or categories of grammatical analysis. Moreover, the three terms in question cannot be lumped together in the same pot. The first and second terms denote parts of speech, while the third one (ﺼﺮﻑ) denotes morphology, which is an entirely different kind of concept.

Second, ﻤﻤﻜﻦ can’t be an adverb, a preposition or a marker. If this word belonged to three or four different categories, its syntactic behaviour would be quite different.

Third, the transcription “mmkn ntaraf” does indeed occur in Arabic chat archives. The second element is no doubt a transcription of one of the forms of the verb ﺘﻌﺮﻑ, which means “to meet” or “to make sb’s acquaintance”. “mmkn ntaraf” presumably means “Can we meet?” The syntactic structure is similar to that of the final sentence in the lower intermediate podcast entitled “You must”. In both cases the adjective ﻤﻤﻜﻦ is followed directly by a verb. The first word in the final sentence of the podcast constitutes a minimal main clause meaning “it is possible”, while all the other words constitute an asyndetic subordinate clause (i. e. there is no subordinator between the two clauses). The sentence looks like a statement because it is not introduced by the interrogative particle ﻫﻞ, but the context and the speaker’s voice make it perfectly clear that it is actually an intonation question.

Fourth, if you really want to use Chomskyan terminology, you might say that the imaginary interrogative sentence introduced by ﻫﻞ constitutes a “deep structure”, while the declarative sentence that actually occurs in the podcast constitutes a “surface structure”. In the present instance, however, I do not find these abstruse Chomskyan concepts particularly helpful. As the French say, “pourquoi faire compliqué quand on peut faire simple?” There is no mystery, no secret code, no insurmountable problem.

löl

What does "löl" mean?

it makes sense to me, desmond. of course 7rf would be the third type of word group, and although it would be correct my brain refuses to accept an adjective being a noun..as in the blue book ...being the book the blue one. i assume at some point it will be ok , as i learn more.deep structure stuff is exactly what i need to grasp in order to form a template for arabic for myself....for this I need imput from a native speaker , are you a native speaker desmond?If so i will accept you as a tutor as you have a skill which i do not have, if you are not a native speaker you cannot help me as english is known to me and of little interest in my search for arabic.
My hope is, not to lose the question in all this disinformation, could one of the native speakers help me out with mmkn and ymkin ? i do not know when and how to use which one.

the need for an arabic speaker.or in the case of saida sierraprasada who uses it daily , thus has found her way out of the arabic woods , and can then help me here, is made clear by your seeing mmkn as an adjective , it is in fact not that in the example I gave ......it is a particple active derived from the verb,thus a verb form, ISM FA7L, its meaning is almost impossible to translate into english ;its about a present condition...(zustand) with a sort of meaning ..lol..of I am in the process of doing ........I can see how you can organise that in your mind as an adjectival form...like the gerund seemily being a noun in english.i think I have gotten this mmkn thing sorted in my mind now , how it is arranged in other places is not relevant to my "BEING IN THE PROCESS OF LEARNING " what is the ismfa7l for that ? daraaun ? mudarun?

in answer to your question about the meaning of löl.....lol is understood to mean laughing out loud, as we were speaking about noam chomskyisms, I added the two dots as a play on the vowel form in Özel in turkish..an example of derived theory.I keep my comments minimal, in keeping with my ideas of communication as a method of transfering those ideas..sometimes i dont even form structures at all..as in löl.

thank you for the e-mail ya ehab, seeing it as an ism as in ism fa7l, is a step towards understanding these parts of arabic verbs , and I do not understand how they work , but I am a beginner and insh allah i shall learn more .

I appreciated the remark about ض affecting the vowels surrounding it. Usually this group of letters are distinguished as being in terms of merely being different consonants (perhaps confusing beginners) whereas their distinction is the effect they have on nearby vowels (before as well as after them). I think of them as 'gravity' letters as they deepen/draw down the voicing of these vowels in a kind of vocal gravity well.

could you post a couple of examples psibear?
is it like the vowel changes one learns in tajweed?

Berry, some examples of an arabic letter affecting the vowel surrunding it are as follows:

but first, let me say that Arabic has 2 "a" sounding vowels.

1. "a" as in "cat"
2. "a" as in "father"

All of the heavy letters, خ غ ق ص ض ط ظ ر when there is a fatha on them, they will make the "a" sound as in "father".

with the other letters, they will make the "a" sound as in "cat".

compare بَ to رَ
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in addition to that, sometimes when a heavy letter comes after a light letter that has a short or long vowel fatha, the vowel sound will change.

Look at this example: باب = baab (the "a" sound here is the same as in "cat")

However, look at this word, which starts off the same but has a heavy letter after the first two: باطل <-- this word is "baatil", and the "a" sound here is pronounced the same as in the word "father".

Kinda hard to explain in text, its best to hear a few examples but hopefully, you get the idea.

Sorry for the delay in replying, Berry. I used the metaphor of gravity because ظ ط ض ص appear to somewhat affect the vocalisation of vowels elsewhere in a word rather than being restricted to those immediately adjacent.

I've read there are differences in the placement of the tongue when pronouncing these letters compared to ذ ت د س but it is their effect on vowels that is more dramatic, especially in comparison to the (more erratic) relationship between vowels & consonants in English.

Although I understand the distinction, I often find it hard to actually hear the difference between حand ه which makes me wonder whether they're sometimes not voiced distinctly by native Arabic speakers. Perhaps it's simply the equivalent of a non-native hearing the difference between p and b in English.