Beginner - A wish

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

Very wonderful lessons! Many thanks for your hard work. This is the best Arabic teaching medium I've found till now!

May God bless you all!

excellent!!!!

I can speak basic Arabic, since moved to Middle East three years ago, but I really wanted to improve the language. I applaud your efforts, guys! I can't leave this website for the past week :) So enticing! Went through all the podcasts :)

Thanks for this wonderful lesson!
I think these two wishes are what most people are dreaming about in this world!
As for your last wish in the lesson, for us to be studying hard, granted ;-) So could you please also let us know if there is an equivalent in Arabic for "your wish is my command"?

Dear na7la,

You might use the expression “taht (ﺘﺤﺖ) 'amruk (ٲﻤﺮﻚ)”, which literally means “at your command” (= ready to help you). The ideal solution, however, is a word combination used in a recently uploaded video entitled “History of Arabic Numbers in Time Telling: Tareq wa Shireen” (YouTube). The expression is used by the little girl when Abbas bin Firnas lands in the garden. Look at the English subtitles. I’m not sure how to spell the words that are employed here. Perhaps Ehab can help us here.

nice. Alhamdulillah

nice lesson, nice wishes, nice voices!
Shukran!

Thanks for this great lesson. I made a good progress with the help of you guys. Jazakallahu '7ayran.