توالي درجات الحرارة إرتفاعها التدريجي على معظم مناطق المملكة وسماء غائمة جزئياً على شمال المملكة وقد تظهر بعض السحب المنخفضة على مرتفعات جنوب غرب المملكة .

- Weather for March 2, 2008 - Saudi Arabia

Important words to know to understand a weather forecast:

توالي - to follow, come in succession, come continually, continue

درجات الحرارة - temperature (degrees of heat)

رَفَعَ - rafa’a - to lift, rise, elevate; A number of other words are derived from this verb, including رفعة (rif’a) - height; رفيع (rafi’) - high, high-ranking, loud; إرتفاع (irtafa’) - rise (of prices, temperature, …), increase, height, altitude.

تدريجيّاً (tadrijian) - gradually

معظم (moa’tham) - most

مناطق (manatiq) - areas

المملكة (al mamalika) - the Kingdom

With these words, the first part of the initial sentence translates as: “Temperatures continue to gradually rise in most areas of the Kingdom.”

سماء (samaa’) - sky

غائم (ghai’m) - cloudy

جزئياً (jazi’yan) - partly

شمال (shamaal) - north, northern

This part of the sentence translates as: “and partly cloudy skies in the northern Kingdom”

ظهر (thahara) - to appear, overcome

بعض (bau’da) - some

سحب (suhub) - clouds

منخفضة - low

جنوب (junub) - south

غرب (gharb) - west

The last part of the sentence translates as “some low clouds appearing in the southwest of the Kingdom.”

عن كثب - القطب الشمالي+ ثاني أكسيد الكربون

عن كثب is a program on Al Jazeera about science and technology. The first 10 minutes of the program, which was shown in October 2007, is about climate change and the Arctic. The second part is about bacteria, but I’m focusing on the first part here.

Keywords to know for understanding the first segment include:

Arabic words for “bird” include طير (tayr), which is most common and is a generic word. The word عصفور (asfuur) refers to a small bird, such as a house sparrow (عصفور دوري) or in describing such birds as the canary. Canary - Pet Care Guide (uses the word عصفور in describing the canary)
This video, with a song and pictures of various birds, is about عصفور:

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