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Re: Short questions

Posted: 2011-09-11, 17:54
by Lalaith en Noldor
Oh, great, thanks :D I knew only for سـ and سوف as future markers. Is this specific (only) for Egyptian dialect or it's used in MSA, too?

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2011-09-11, 18:38
by Bubulus
Lalaith en Noldor wrote:Oh, great, thanks :D I knew only for سـ and سوف as future markers. Is this specific (only) for Egyptian dialect or it's used in MSA, too?
Definitely not Standard Arabic, but it's used in the Arabic vernacular of Cairo at least.

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2195560

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2011-09-11, 19:18
by Lalaith en Noldor
Okay, thanks once again! :)

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2011-12-15, 5:57
by Meera
Is there any differnce betweenفتاة and بنت? Or can they be used interchangeably?

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-08, 15:00
by E Pluribus Neo
I once saw a Pimsleur course called Eastern Arabic. I thought there were dialects like Lebanese or Syrian and that there are a little bit different in a way. Does that mean the course took one of the Eastern varieties?

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-08, 17:42
by Bubulus
Meera wrote:Is there any differnce betweenفتاة and بنت? Or can they be used interchangeably?
بنت can mean "daughter" (regardless of age) as well as "girl", and I think فتاة implies being in late adolescence or young adulthood or something like that. So yeah, they can be used interchangeably if you mean "girl" and the girl is in that age range.

(As for words for "daughter", there's also ابنة ibna, which is simply more formal than بنت.)

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-09, 4:23
by Meera
Serafín wrote:
Meera wrote:Is there any differnce betweenفتاة and بنت? Or can they be used interchangeably?
بنت can mean "daughter" (regardless of age) as well as "girl", and I think فتاة implies being in late adolescence or young adulthood or something like that. So yeah, they can be used interchangeably if you mean "girl" and the girl is in that age range.

(As for words for "daughter", there's also ابنة ibna, which is simply more formal than بنت.)


Shukran

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-09, 4:58
by Meera
E Pluribus Neo wrote:I once saw a Pimsleur course called Eastern Arabic. I thought there were dialects like Lebanese or Syrian and that there are a little bit different in a way. Does that mean the course took one of the Eastern varieties?


I think it uses Syrian.

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-09, 7:50
by E Pluribus Neo
Ok. Thank you. :)

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-09, 7:57
by Meera
Syrian and Lebanese are really close so it could be either but I think its the Syrian dialect used in Damascus.

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-22, 12:35
by Shad
Is this the correct transliteration of فنزويلا (Venezuela) = fenezuuylaa? Is that the way it's pronounced?

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-22, 14:31
by YngNghymru
I think it's probably finizwiila. It's probably pronounced more like /venezwiːla/ though, depending on dialect and level of education. A lot of non-Arab countries' translations vary quite a bit - sometimes I think this depends on what language they were borrowed from, but also maybe on the convention in the country the writer comes from (since MSA, despite its name, is not actually wholly standardised).

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-22, 15:34
by Bubulus
I think pronouncing it /ve.nez.ˈwe:.la/ if the speaker's dialect has [e:] is perfectly conceivable too.

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-23, 4:55
by Shad
Thanks, YngNghymru and Serafín. There must be however a standard pronunciation of country names in MSA, right?

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-03-23, 13:35
by YngNghymru
No, because MSA is not actually standardised.

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-10-08, 6:30
by Rémy LeBeau
Cross-posting from the Levantine thread:

Has anyone here spent any time in Lebanon? I'm going for 6 weeks and I'm looking for a private dialect teacher to study with 2/3 hours a day 5/6 days a week. If anyone has any suggestions please get in touch.

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-10-20, 8:08
by djc29
Having just started a Beginner's Arabic course at my University (just for fun, not for credit), I have a couple of short questions about the hamzah. We went over it in class, but I am still confused.

1. When does one use a hamzah? I know it indicates a glottal stop, but doesn't alif do the same?

2. I understand (in the basic form) which letter takes the hamzah when two could, but what would a waw/ya' with a hamza sound like? /uʔ/ and /iʔ/ or /wʔ/ and /jʔ/ (perhaps with the short vowel on the proceeding consonant between the consonantal waw/ya' and the glottal stop?)

3. ...why not just use it as a regular letter, i.e. why the use of hamzah as a diacritic?

Shukran!

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-10-20, 13:31
by Babelfish
I think I learned the rules of hamza at a relatively late stage of my study of Arabic, it can indeed be confusing :)
1. No, alif itself doesn't indicate the glottal stop. It just "carries" the hamza.
2. Similarly, waw and ya' just "carry" the hamza, when they do (note also that ya' with hamza doesn't even have the two dots below diacritic). They sound like a glottal stop just like alif or isolated hamza do; their w/y pronunciation is discarded.
3. Good question, but I suppose it's just like why some letters don't connect to the following letter - the writing just developed that way :D

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-10-20, 22:48
by Bubulus
djc29 wrote:1. When does one use a hamzah? I know it indicates a glottal stop, but doesn't alif do the same?
The ʔalif historically indicated a glottal stop, many centuries ago, cognate with the Hebrew alef. If you have a look at a Qur'an, you'll notice that there's hardly any ʔalif used for /a:/, it always uses a diacritic, some high short ʔalif, on a consonant instead.

Nowadays the ʔalif indicates mainly a long /a:/, or that phonologically a word can start with two consonants if it isn't in the beginning of a phrase (استمر /ʔistamarːa/ ~ /stamarːa/ 'to continue', الـ /ʔal/ ~ /l/ 'the'). The hamza can go on or under an alif, but that's still a hamza indicating something... Often, the hamza isn't written at the beginning of a word, but in full harakāt you'd still use a hamza there.
2. I understand (in the basic form) which letter takes the hamzah when two could, but what would a waw/ya' with a hamza sound like? /uʔ/ and /iʔ/ or /wʔ/ and /jʔ/ (perhaps with the short vowel on the proceeding consonant between the consonantal waw/ya' and the glottal stop?)
Yeah, the /w, j/ sounds are discarded. بطئ for example is just /batˤiʔ/. The yāʔ and wāw (and ʔalef) just serve as "seats" for hamza in such cases.
3. ...why not just use it as a regular letter, i.e. why the use of hamzah as a diacritic?
One hypothesis goes that it worked as a compromise between two old prestigious pronunciations of Arabic: one that retained glottal stops between two vowels, and another that used glides. So some would pronounce a certain word meaning 'question', سؤال, as [sʊˈʔæːl] and others as [sʊˈwæːl].

Re: Short questions

Posted: 2012-10-22, 19:37
by djc29
Thank you both for your replies - summarized:

The hamza(h) itself does indicate a glottal stop, but it cannot appear on its own (except word-finally) and requires a "seat" of an alif, ya', or waw (because of the historical writing systems used) to indicate the pronunciation of the /ʔ/ in place of the phoneme indicated by the "seat".

A lot less confusing than I had made it out to be in my mind!