Intermediate - Where to eat

Few observations related to the word شهية (shaheeya) (= appetite, desire, lust).

Form 8 defective verb derived from the same root is اشتهى / يشتهي (ishtahaa / yashtahee) (= to feel appetite for, to long for, to crave for). It is conjugated similar to انتهى / ينتهي (intahaa / yantahee) (= to finish, to end).

When you are offered some food, and you do not want it, you can say - لا أشتهيه or لا أشتهيها , depending upon the gender of the name of the food being offered.

Its verbal noun is اشتهاء (ishtihaa’)

Most interesting that there are different words for had breakfast, had lunch, or had dinner. Here in the U.S., I think we might say "breakfasted," "lunched," and "dined." Breakfasted and lunched are specific to those meals. Dined could be used for all three, but I suspect its use for breakfast and lunch are rare. Are the Arabic words colloquial or informal? I saw "تَنَاوَلْتُ طَعَامَ العَشَاءِ " on another website, perhaps for a more formal way of saying had dinner?

We could also say "supped" for dinner, but I think "had dinner" or (perhaps more in heartland U.S. --) "had supper" are more common.

Wonder if people heard the same as I did on this lesson. At times the Anta e7’tar seems to be pronounced like Ant e7'tar, that is, eliding the "a" vowel and at other times it seems to be pronounced as An e7’tar, eliding both the t and a sounds. Maybe this has been discussed in a prior lesson, but I do not recall it.

@ chazyouwin

When the imperative “’ikhtar” (ﺇﺨﺘﺭ) is preceded by the personal pronoun “’anta” (ﺃﻨﺖ) the initial vowel of the verb is elided. The word combination sounds like “’antakhtar”. There is only one sentence in which this elision does not take place, and in this sentence the grammatical status of “’ikhtar” is unclear. To my knowledge, this kind of elision has never been discussed in any of the podcasts.

It is also interesting to note that the stress is sometimes shifted to the second syllable of “’ikhtar”. Arabic imperatives frequently display such stress shifts. Over a year ago I enquired about this phenomenon, but so far nobody has offered an explanation.

There are many other interesting phonetic phenomena which have never been mentioned in the podcasts. Have you noticed that in MSA the word combination “fy al-” is generally pronounced like Engl. “fill”? Examples:

fy al-hayaa: in life
fy al-matar: in the rain

I assume that most native speakers of Arabic are unaware (or only half-aware) of these fascinating phonetic phenomena, just as most native speakers of English are probably unaware that in rapid speech the “n” in “ten” is elided before an “m”. Example: ten mice > temmice.

Linguists speak of regressive assimilation when a change is brought about by following sounds, and they speak of progressive assimilation when a change is brought about by preceding sounds. “’Antakhtar” could be classified as an instance of progressive assimilation because the pronounciation of the imperative is modified by the phonetic structure of the pronoun that precedes it. Progressive assimilation can even occur within words. This explains why the plural endings in “cats” and “dogs” are not pronounced in the same way. The “s” in “cats” is voiceless, while the “s” in dogs is voiced (i.e. it sounds like a “z”).

Desmond, thanks for the lucid explanation. I was a confused on first hearing the lesson, because the dropped vowel made it sound like there was an n-type particle, something like which has been discussed in previous lessons. But the repetition here made it clear that there was an elision and so made it much more interesting.
As to the fy al to fil change, I might have sworn it had been discussed in one of the earlier lessons. It was not a surprise at all. But I'll defer to your much better memory of the lessons. Probably, I just became used to hearing it that way.

really cool lesson. في حياتي هزه المحادثهة مهم بالنسبالي! :-)
شكرا

@ Desmond

Just some food for thought I have been learning to teach english as a second language and I also have been studying arabic grammar for some years now.

What I have learned from learning to teach esl is that I tried to apply arabic grammar rules to help me in esl ebglish grammar which we are taught that is is a grave mistake that people make when attempting to learn new languages.

Although there are similarities in grammatical terminaligies the fact of the matter is they are two totally different languages that have their roots in different origins.

Also the arabic grammar system was made up to preserve the arabic language when islam started to spread because the pre islamic arabs didn't mix with other nations generally as a whole so they didn't need grammar at the time because they were not in danger of loosing the origins of the arabic language in a form unpoluted by other languages.

As you can see every word in arabic has an origin for example sayyaarah=car (modern translation) but sayyaarah is luiguistically a caravan, and the list goes on.

Another thing is every ones level of grammar even teachers, vary on different levels and sometimes there is no way to explain a principle from arabic to english because there is no english equivalent to that paricular grammar principle.

In short the farther you go in Arabic you will need arabic to explain arabic and hence abandoning looking for an english explanation to an ancient language.

Hope this helps a bit,oh I forgot the dots and vowels were also created for people who didn't have a native arab tongue thus all the letters looked the same but the arabs knew the difference.

Regards ,Ruqayyah

@ Ruqayyah

The word ﺴﻴﺎﺮﺓ (siyyaara) is doubly interesting. It has undergone a semantic shift, and it belongs to a group of deverbal nouns which denote vehicles. The Arabic words for “submarine” and “tank” belong to the same category.

Grammatical terms fall into two broad categories which might be labelled “cross-linguistic” and “language-specific”. Terms like “tense” and “number” can be used to describe a wide range of languages, while terms like “broken plural” can only be employed in descriptions of Semitic languages like Arabic and Maltese.

Grammatical rules are always language-specific, but most language learners imagine they can apply the rules of their first language to any foreign language. This is why the vast majority of language learners are unsuccessful. Their texts are riddled with errors which fall into two categories: (1) errors due to interference phenomena, and (2) errors due to mental confusion and lack of intelligence.

Language teaching, like language learning, sharpens one’s awareness of linguistic phenomena which often pass unnoticed. Have you ever thought about irregular English plurals like “mice” and “lice”? These are Germanic plurals, and they are not unlike certain broken plurals in Arabic.