TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2017-07-18, 19:59

voron wrote:Does it literally say "Because I can be in كوبا, don't forget me"? What is كوبا?

I'm really not sure, but I thought of it the same way Limagne did - maybe Cuba just stands for a random place on the other end of the Earth, so something like "even if I'm in Cuba, don't forget me" or "wherever I might be, don't forget me" ?

An interesting thing is the passive voice with n, which is used in the last 3 lines:

عدد أيام الصمود بين تحرش و بين حرب ما بتنعد
القوة في ذاتك مش ممكن أنها تنصد
لما تبلشي تفكري بحالك ، طريقك ما بتنسد

The number of days, the steadfastness between harassment and between war, is not counted. (عَدّ - to count)
The power in yourself is not possible that it is repelled (صَدَّ - to repel)
When you start to think about yourself, your path is not blocked (سَدَّ - to block)

As far as I know, Levantine and Egyptian (and maybe other dialects) prefer to form the passive this way, using form VII. The standard Arabic passive form فُعَلَ is rarely if ever used in colloquial.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby Limagne » 2017-07-20, 8:01

voron wrote:
Limagne wrote:Cuba, maybe? :D

Nah, doesn't fit the context.

Limagne, hevalo, are you interested in Arabic, too? :)


I am, although I don't have much free time on my hands. I will just live vicariously through your posts, for the time being :blush:

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-05, 0:23

Aaand today I finished my last Pimsleur Eastern Arabic lesson (there were 90 in total). That was fun and I learnt a lot. The last word I learnt was موَفَّق, which in the lesson's context meant "good luck!".

Now the next thing I wanted to do was to concentrate on Levantine Arabic, but I've changed my mind and I want to do Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic too. The reason I wanted to do Levantine only was because I was looking to make my spoken Arabic consistently Levantine, so I didn't want interference from other dialects. Why I changed my mind is because, trying to be perfectionist in any sense is harmful for learning Arabic. The more exposure the better, and if you do several dialects it's much more likely you'll find native materials that you really like. And why should care if I start mixing dialects, I can't and I don't want to pretend being an Arab anyway. I just want to understand and be understood.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-05, 4:20

voron wrote:Aaand today I finished my last Pimsleur Eastern Arabic lesson (there were 90 in total). That was fun and I learnt a lot.

مبروك!

I've changed my mind and I want to do Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic too.

YES!!!! Finally there will be someone else around here learning Egyptian! If you stick with Egyptian for a while, you'll be blown away by how many resources there are for it, not to mention how much media there is in it--even books. I bought a book in Cairo written in a kind of half-MSA, half-Egyptian that I should take a look at.

The more exposure the better, and if you do several dialects it's much more likely you'll find native materials that you really like. And why should care if I start mixing dialects, I can't and I don't want to pretend being an Arab anyway. I just want to understand and be understood.

I think that's really sensible and has basically been my approach. The other thing I would suggest is to not forget MSA. It really helps fill in the gaps in cross-dialect communication. And most of the time, when Arabs use word X in one dialect but word Y in another, both X and Y come from different fuS7a roots. So if you know fuS7a well, when you hear a new word in Egyptian that you'd never heard in Levantine (for example), you're often able to figure out its meaning.
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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-05, 5:02

eskandar wrote:
I've changed my mind and I want to do Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic too.

YES!!!! Finally there will be someone else around here learning Egyptian! If you stick with Egyptian for a while, you'll be blown away by how many resources there are for it, not to mention how much media there is in it--even books. I bought a book in Cairo written in a kind of half-MSA, half-Egyptian that I should take a look at.

LP Egyptian Arabic is the only book for any dialect of Arabic I have ever bought just because I happened to come across it at Barnes & Noble and I thought, eh, I might as well buy it. :lol: Barron's Arabic phrasebook also uses Egyptian.

The second time I went to India was through Kuwait, with my dad about four months after my grandfather's death when I was eight years old. I took Barron's with me because I was young and naive enough to think that maybe it would help me talk to people there. :ohwell: And then of course, in the end, we ended up in a hotel in Kuwait where everyone was Malayalee: everyone staying there and I think everyone working there, probably including the security guards, but with the exception of the hotel owner, who was Chinese or something. :lol: Oh, and I lost Barron's somewhere along the way, too, but bought it again at Half Price Books many years later. :P

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-05, 5:16

vijayjohn wrote:I took Barron's with me because I was young and naive enough to think that maybe it would help me talk to people there.

Haha hey, it might have, if you had been able to find anyone who actually speaks Arabic in Kuwait! :rotfl:
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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-05, 5:35

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I took Barron's with me because I was young and naive enough to think that maybe it would help me talk to people there.

Haha hey, it might have, if you had been able to find anyone who actually speaks Arabic in Kuwait! :rotfl:

I had, I swear!

...for like five minutes. :lol:

(It's ironic, too, because I watched a fair bit of Arabic TV on the plane and then a little more at the hotel...).

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-07, 15:04

I've watched some episodes of Easy Languages for Egyptian Arabic and my biggest impression: the way the put question words in the end of sentences is crazy!

It looks like this if directly translated to English:
You want to travel where?
I don't know, I will study what at university.
Can you tell me, you like the forum how?

:roll:

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-07, 15:47

I am so tempted to give you a lecture on languages that do that, voron. :lol:

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-07, 17:03

vijayjohn wrote:I am so tempted to give you a lecture on languages that do that, voron. :lol:

I realize it's not something unusual and there may be dozens of languages that do that, but it was especially odd to see it in Egyptian after having got used to the straightforward word order in MSA and Syrian. It's like as if I suddenly found a Slavic language that puts question words in the end.

Note 1: I've found out that there's only 1 level of Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic. That was a bit surprising. Did they consider Eastern Arabic (for which they have as many as 3 levels) to be more marketable than Egyptian I wonder.

Note 2: The guy from "Learn Arabic naturally" (who I initially found out about from Saim's post) decided to make all his videos private... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9LVTc ... 7j385qlmuA :doggy:

הענט

Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby הענט » 2017-08-08, 17:55

We would also use how at the end of a sentence. With a sarcastic tone.

[flag=]cs[/flag] A to mi pomůže jak?

Of course only if you want to stress jak.

The normal order would be - ) A jak mi to pomůže?

how is this going to help me?

Back to topic:
Yeah. I only did the free demo of Pimsleur Egyptian Arabic. I learned their way of saying yes. :)

Are you going to switch to Egyptian Arabic?
Btw. Rosetta Stone MSA has a speaker from Sudan or Yemen, because he seems to pronounce djim with the Hungarian gy sound. Arabs who speak MSA usually keep their native pronunciation IIRC.
Last edited by הענט on 2017-08-08, 18:01, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-08, 17:56

We do this in English, too.

EDIT: We can do this with any question word in English but not only to express sarcasm.
Last edited by vijayjohn on 2017-08-09, 15:26, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-08, 18:25

Dr. House wrote:Are you going to switch to Egyptian Arabic?

My primary goal is to develop all skills in Levantine but only passively understand Egyptian. But I won't be upset if it goes astray and I start mixing the two in speaking.

I'll use materials for both. For Egyptian, I've started watching Easy Arabic, and for Levantine, I'm going to watch some of these films: https://www.youtube.com/user/AinOuzon , and maybe something unsubtitled, too.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-13, 13:21

I've done 20 lessons of Pimsleur Egyptian (mostly listening to the initial dialog and then skimming through the rest of the recording). There aren't many new things to learn on top of Levantine.

Amusing stuff:
very - قوي 'awi, which in MSA means 'strong'
How are you? I am very well - ازيك؟ كويس قوي - izzayyak? kwayyes 'awi

give me - ادّيلي - iddiili (is that it? or have I misheard it? what does it mean in MSA)
حاجة - thing
دا، دي - this

I guess I knew all that stuff already from random sources.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-13, 14:06

بجدّ - bigadd - really?
صغيّر - Sughayyar - small
Last edited by voron on 2017-08-20, 11:23, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby eskandar » 2017-08-13, 20:03

voron wrote:give me - ادّيلي - iddiili (is that it? or have I misheard it? what does it mean in MSA)

I think it's ادّيني and I would guess it's a deformed version of اعطيني from classical.

voron wrote:ب جدّ - bigadd - really?
صغيّر - Su3ayyar - small

بجدّ (written together) - the Levantine equivalent is عن جد
Sughayyar (note the dot on the ghayn!) - diminutive of صغير Saghiir
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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-14, 15:40

eskandar wrote:Sughayyar (note the dot on the ghayn!) - diminutive of صغير Saghiir

Yep I realized it was a diminutive (I latinized غ as 3 by mistake). It's interesting that in Russian маленький (small) is also a diminutive of the older form малый (the older form is now only used in set expressions).

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-20, 0:58

This feature of Egyptian Arabic of putting question word at the end of a sentence still continues amusing me.

For example in Pochahontas's song in Egyptian Arabic (many thanks to the person who added Arabic and English subtitles to it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_5vqTbODC8

At 0:10, she says:
متعاجب كده ليه - Met'ageb keda leh? - (You are) surprised like that why?
وسر غرورك إيه - We sirr ghourourak eh? - And the secret of your arrogance what?
قلي تعرف عن الدنيا دي إيه؟ - Oulli, ta3raf 3an-ed-dunya deeh eh? - Tell me, you know about this world what?
تعرف إيه؟ - ta3raf eh? - You know what?

Isn't it super sweet?

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-20, 2:32

Samira Said doesn't know what you want from Egyptian Arabic anymore, voron, and she isn't even Egyptian! :silly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R1X2vsCU00
ما خلاص، عايز ايه منى؟ (ايه؟)
ابعد بقى عنى! (ايه؟)
حاول تفهمنى، الماضى خلاص، انساه!

ما خلاص، ايه جابك تانى؟ (ايه؟)
ارتاح وانسانى! (ايه؟)
واللى هييجى منك والله مانيش عايزاه!

بتقول انا كنت زمان بهواك.
بصراحه انا مش فاكراك
وبتتكلم عن اييييييييه؟

ما خلاص، راحت يا حبيبى عليك!
عايز تحلم؟ خليك!
وعايزنى اعملك اييييييييه؟

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Re: TAC - voron (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic)

Postby voron » 2017-08-20, 22:19

vijayjohn wrote:Samira Said doesn't know what you want from Egyptian Arabic anymore, voron,

عايز من مصري ايه؟ - I want from Egyptian what?
و بتعلّمها ليه؟ - and I study it why?
بتعلّمها ليه؟ - I study it why?
:)

Thanks for the song!


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