Nisba nouns are “relative adjectives” that are modified from nouns, for example from a place name to describe a person from the place. These adjectives often indicate affiliation, origin, or other relation to the noun (e.g., a place).

فرنسا (faranca) or France -> فرنسي (francee) or French.

لبنان (lubnan) - Lebanon -> لتناني (lubnani) - Lebanese

كندا (kanada) - Canada -> كندي (kanadi) - Canadian

Nisba can also be used to form nouns, such as professions, and other words such as مدني (medani) - civilian, which is modified from مدينة - medina or “city”.

A nisba is usually formed by adding a ي to the end of a noun. If a noun ends in a ta’ marbuta (ة) or alif (ا), it is usually dropped and the ي added. As with other adjectives, nisba adjectives need to agree with nouns they modified. For nisbas that go with feminine nouns, the nisba needs to be in the feminine form, by adding the ta’ marbuta.

For example, وزارة الخارجية (wizara al-kharijia) - foreign ministry

وزارة الداخلية (wizara al-dakhalia) - interior ministry

Other nisba examples include:

Vocabulary

Here are some vocabulary words for family members and various places (of work):

Sentences

Here are some example sentences using these words. The verb عمل is in the “present” tense here, which means a prefix is attached (ي) for male, singular third person (”he”) and for female, singular third person (”she”), a ت is attached. And to make father, mother, brother, or sister possessive (e.g. “my brother”), a suffix is attached to the noun. In this case, the suffix is for first person singular (”my”), which is a ي.

والدي يعمل في مستشفى - My father works in a hospital.

والدتي تعمل في مدرسة - My mother works in a school.

أخي يعمل في المطار - My brother works at the airport.

أخي يعمل في مصنة - My brother works in a factory.

أختي تعمل في مطعم - My sister works in a restaurant.

أختي تعمل في متحف - My sister works in a museum.

Pronouns may be used in sentences to separate the subject and the object (predicate), in situations where there is no verb.

For example:

هَذا هُوَ التفاح اخضر - This is a green apple.

Compared to a noun phrase:

هَذا التفاح اخضر - This green apple…

Another example:

هَذَهِ هِيَ الصورة - This is a picture.

هَذَهِ الصورة - This picture…

Sometimes the pronoun of separation is omitted if the meaning is nonetheless clear without it.

While English only has plural and singular forms of nouns, Arabic also has the dual form to denote two of something. Adjectives that describe a dual noun will also be in dual form.

Forming dual nouns

To form a dual noun, a suffix is added:

انِ (-ani) or ينِ (ayni)

The انِ (-ani) suffix is used for nouns (and adjectives) in the nominative case, that is when the noun is the subject of the sentence.

For example:

• كنابانِ (kitabani) - two books
• طلفانِ (tilfani) - two kids

Note that in casual speech (colloquial), the final kasra is usually not pronounced.

A different suffix (ينِ or “-ayni”) is used for words that are in the accusative (object of the sentence) or genitive (object of a preposition) case.

For example:

• أكلتُ تفاحينِ (akaltu tufaahayni) - I ate two apples.
• في كتابينِ (fi kitabayni) - in two books

When a word ends in a ta marbuta, the ta marbuta is becomes a ت (”ta”).

The word for “get, attain, occur” is حَصَلَ (hasala).

Examples of how this word can be used:

* I received a degree from Harvard University in 2004. - حصلتُ شهادة من جامعة هارفارد في سنة 2004

* He got the most number of votes in the election. - حصل معظم الاصوات الانتخابات

Conjugated in the perfect (”past”) tense:

Many sentences in Arabic, written in the present tense, do not require the verb “to be” (e.g. “is”, “are”, “am”). Nominal sentences in the present tense do not use the “to be” verb, such as ٌٌُُالسماءُ أزرقٌ (al-samaa’u azraqun) - “The sky is blue”.

For the past and future tense, Arabic has the verb كانَ (kana) (”to be”).

• كنتُ طالب - I was a student. (comparable to أنا طالب - I am a student)
• كُنّا نسكن في مصر - We used to live in Egypt.

In the future tense:

• سَأكونُ في لندن يوم الاثنين - I will be in London on Monday.

There are a few situations where present tense sentences need to use كانَ.

Conjugation

As with other verbs in Arabic, كانَ is conjugated.

As in English, questions in Arabic are indicated with use of rising intonation.  Here are some question words in Arabic:

مَل (hal) - do (as in “do you?” or “is it?”), used for yes/no questions

ما؟ (maa) - what?

ماذاذ؟ (matha) - what? (used with verbs, such as “what are you doing?”)

مِن؟ (min) - who?

أينَ؟ (ayna) - where?

كَيفَ؟ (kayfa) - how?

متى (meta) - when?

لماذا؟ (limatha) - why?

كم؟ (kam) - How many?

Examples

مِن هُوَ؟ - Who is he?

مِن أينَ أنتَ؟ - Where are you from?

كَيفَ حالك؟ - How are you?

كَيفَ الحال؟ - How are things?

ما هذا؟ - What is that?

مل يوحد؟ - Is there …? or “are there …?”

The verb “translate” is ترجم (tarjama) in Arabic.

From this verb, a number of different nouns can be derived including “translator”. The word for “translator” (male, singular) is مترجم (mutarjim) and for “translator (female, singular) is مترجمة (mutarjima). The plural, masculine form of the word is مترجمون (mutarjimun) or in some grammatical situations, it is مترجمين (mutarjimin). The feminine, plural form (”translators”) is مترجمات (mutarjimat).

Another noun derived from the verb is “translation”. The singular form of the word is ترجمة (tarjima) and the plural is ترجمات (tarjimat).

The BBC Xtra English program for March 26, 2007 was about translators or more specifically about subtitlers (people who write subtitles for films). They talk about how skill and quality is important for the job, and how lack of quality has led to some “bad translations”. They use the word ركيكة (rakika) to describe these as “weak, meager, poor quality, feeble” - ترجمة ركيكة (tarjima rakika).

The entire clip can be heard on the BBC Xtra English website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/elt/newsid_6495000/6495143.stm

Here are some words to help understand this news clip, which is about banks and money in the Gulf area:

To become proficient for reading newspapers and magazines, one needs to learn 3000-4000 words, and more for reading fiction or general conversation. (source: The Art and Science of Learning Languages - by Amorey Gethin) Many of the key words to learn are verbs, which are used repeatedly. In the last post, verbs were introduced along with the concept of conjugating them. It would help to learn one (or more) new verbs each day.

I already know some verbs, including these below, and will be posting new verbs regularly.

As is customary in Arabic, these verbs are given in the 3rd person, masculine past tense, which is how the verbs are listed in the dictionary.