When learning a language, it is an enormous help to practice reading news articles and other things, and read a lot. BBC Arabic is a good source for news articles, in addition to their audio broadcasts. From time to time, I post excerpts from articles, look up words I don’t know, and practice reading. This article is about relations between the UK and Russia.

تفاقم الازمة الدبلوماسية بين لندن وموسكو - BBC News (January 2, 2008)

فقم (faqima) - to aggravate, escalate, become grave, serious, critical, dangerous, come to a head

أزمة (azma) - crisis

دبلوماسية (diblomasia) - diplomatic

بين (beyna) - between

The word order in the sentence is Verb-Subject (adjective)-Prepositional phrase. The verb فقم (faqima) is conjugated in the present tense, in the feminine-third person form by appending the “ت” to the beginning of the verb and it is pronounced with a damma (”u” sound) at the end of the word. The word also changes form here, with an added alif. The verb in this form, tense, and conjugation is pronounced “tafaaqimu”.

The word أزمة (azma) is a definite noun here, because it refers to a specific crisis. This is a feminine noun. The adjective دبلوماسية (diblomasia) must agree with the noun in gender and also be definite.

With these words, the headline translates as “The diplomatic crisis escalates between London and Moscow”.

The first sentence of this news article is ازدادت شدة التوتر في العلاقة الدبلوماسية بين موسكو ولندن عندما قام

ازداد (izdada) - increase

شدة (shadda) - strengthening, intensification, emphasis; شدة (shidda) - strength, forcefulness, power, intensity

توتر (tawattur) - tension, strain

علاقة (a’laqa) - relations, affiliation, association, …

This roughly translates as “Tensions have intensified in the relations between Moscow and London.”

More later…