In December, scientists announced the discovery of fossils of a species believed to be the ancestor of the whale. It is a deer-like creature, the size of a raccoon, that lived in the Kashmir region. The discovery was reported in numerous news articles, including BBC News:

اكتشاف علمي:اصل الحوت حيوان يشبه الغزال - BBC News

The title of this article begins with the phrase “scientific discovery” (كتشاف علمي). This is an example of how adjectives are used. Adjectives follow the noun that they describe or modify. In this case, the noun is إكتشاف (iktashafa) - discovery. The adjective is علمي (a’lmee) - scientific, which is a variation of the word علم (a’lm) - science. Turning nouns such as “science” into adjectives (”scientific”) is a nisba (relative noun). Forming a nisba involves adding ي (ee) for nouns ending in a consonant.

Other words in the title here include:

حيوان (hayawan) - animal

اصل (asl) - original

حوت (huut) - whale

شبه (shibh) - resemblance; شابه (shabaha) - resemble

غزال (ghazal) - gazelle

The title of the article translates as “scientific discovery: origins of the whale, an animal resembling the gazelle”.

Image credit: ArthurWeasley, Wikimedia Commons - CC-BY-3.0