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Salam,

1) can we use ما اقدر
for " I cant" instead of "Laa Asta6ee3" .
2) Also in the first sentence was to change " I will take you..." will this be right.سأقدك.....

Shukran!

Ahlan Quest

Yes indeed, you can use (maa aqder ما أقدر) instead of (maa asta6ee3). The word (Aqder أقدر) means (I- Be able to) and (Asta6ee3 أستطيع) means (I can), so they are synonyms.

On the second question, I believe you mean (Sa2aqooduk سأقودك). If this sentence is used with humans it would mean (I will guide you) while if it is used with objects like car for instance i.e (sa2aqooduha سأقودها) then it would mean (I will drive it - referring to a car).
So you can't use (سأقودك) instead of the first sentence to mean (i will drive you - referring to the man), it does not work in Arabic as it does in English for that situation.

Hope all is clear.

Salam-alaikum Ustaad Saleh,

Jazaka-Allah Khair for such clear explaination.

May Allah give you'll Jaza and Khair for such a wonderful website.

Shukran ikteer!

salam..
i wanted to know if anyone could help me! i know this is random!

i was in turkey and watching a arabic show..
there was this man talking and this other man kept replying sab to everything being said!

can someone tell me what this could mean ?

also can someone tell me how many ways i can use the word umar or umr = age

thanks

@ saj159

The word you heard in Turkey was probably "sa'b", which means "difficult". There is a glottal stop between the two vowels.

A few months ago Ehab posted a comment on the word "'umr", but I can't remember where the comment is.

@ saj159

I've just found Ehab's comment on the word "'umr". Go to the lesson entitled "How old are you?" and look at the comment that Ehab posted on 24 September 2010.

Or maybe the Turkish guy was saying "sah" صح, which means "true" and is often used as a filler statement when agreeing with someone...

@ maasbar

Your explanation is plausible, maasbar. The word you mention is extremely common and has often been used in the podcasts (cf. "Trip to London", line 2).

There is, however, a considerable difference between the words for "correct / true" and "difficult". This raises an extremely interesting question. Did saj159 really hear a "b" sound at the end of the word under discussion, or did he merely imagine he heard a "b" sound?

Our eyes and ears can play tricks on us, and many language learners are unable to see or hear things they do not expect to see or hear. Here are a few examples:

(1) I once asked a German student to read an English text where the noun "inflation" occurred several times. There was no article before the word "inflation", but the German student read "the inflation" instead of "inflation" because the German word "Inflation" is normally preceded by the definite article. He was convinced that he saw "the" before "inflation" because he expected to see a definite article there. I corrected his mistakes and asked him to re-read the text, but he made exactly the same mistakes a second time because his false expectations prevented him from seeing the words on the printed page before him.

(2) Some time ago I asked a French student to read a German text containing the word "bin", a verb form which is pronounced exactly like the English noun "bin". Although I had told him how "bin" is pronounced in German, he pronounced "bin" like the the English word "been". Since the vowel sound in "bin" - unlike the vowel sound in "been" - does not occur in French, he substituted a French vowel for a German vowel. I corrected his mistakes, but he was still unable to perceive the phonetic difference between "bin" and "been".

(3) Native speakers of Arabic often mispronounce English words like "but", "that" and "it" because they are unable to perceive phonetic differences between English and Arabic. They say "bu'ut", "tha'at" and "i'it" as though there was a glottal stop (i.e. a hamza) in the middle of each word.

thanks desmond and maasbar!

also could someone explain the word men gad or min gid think it means really just wnat to know when its said! and also the word billa or billa 3aliq i think! i think it means are u being for real!

salam

@saj159

3n jad - really

min jad = "really" or "seriously". Like in English it can be used to show agreement ... "really." , or to show surprise ... "seriously? "

Why does he say "I took a toilet..." can you really translate that to mean I took a shower? Is it more common to say "dosh"

@ cwwolfe

He doesn’t say “I took a toilet”. He says “I had (or took) a shower.” Hammam (ﺤﻤﺎﻢ can mean “toilet”, “bathroom” or “shower”. The noun “shower” can also be rendered as dush (ﺪﺶ or duush (ﺪﻮﺶ, and there are two Arabic verbs (ﺍﻏﺘﺴﻝ and ﺍﺴﺘﺤﻢ which mean “to have (or take) a shower”.

In order to find out whether ﺪﺶ is more common than ﺤﻤﺎﻢ you would have to collect data from over twenty Arab-speaking countries. Linguists would have to sift through millions of publications (including those which have not yet been digitalised), interview millions of people (including those who can neither read nor write), and draw up frequency tables for different regions and age groups. Since ﺤﻤﺎﻢ has several meanings, Google searches would not be particularly helpful. Google can’t disambiguate polysemous lexical items.