Religion is definitely important in Middle East countries, with Islam overwhelmingly dominant. Though, in Egypt, there is a minority Coptic Christian population. The word for “church” in Arabic is كنيسة (kanisa).

This video clip comes from BBC Arabic, which talks about the Roman Catholic Church, which has built a church in Doha, Qatar:

This Al Jazeera news clip, from a month ago, has the headline:
الجيش التركي يعلن إنه بدأ عملية عسكرية برية في شمالي العراق

There are some key words here to help understand the news clip, including:

With these words, the headline translates as “Turkey announces the army is beginning military ground operations in northern Iraq”

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:

Another site that I have found very useful is http://www.arabicmusictranslation.com/, which has lyrics to songs in Arabic, with translations to English.

Songs include different types of phrases, some that are used in day-to-day speech. Many of the songs are also sung in a dialect (often Egyptian colloquial). For example, the phrase ايه يعني (aaya ya’ni) which translates as “so what?” in English.

The person behind the Arabic lyrics site recently started a second web site, http://egyptianarabiccourse.blogspot.com/ where he focuses on the Egyptian colloquial dialect with examples from song and more detailed explanations of the lyrics. This looks very useful, since colloquial is the day-to-day spoken language and is essential to learn these types of phrases.

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:

This video is of an Al Jazeera program, nearly an hour-long, where they interview Syrian Prosecutor-General Ghada Murad. She was the first woman to enter the judiciary in Syria and is now in the position, equivalent of “Attorney General” in Syria. She is involved in “investigating” the killing of former Lebanese premier Rafik Harari and is expected to cooperate with the United Nations on their investigation.

I was able to pick out numerous words in the program that I understand and get the gist of it. Some key words here include:

محام (muhaamin) - lawyer

ولدت (waladat) - she was born

نساء (nisaa’) - woman (singular)

رجل (rajul) - man (singular); رجال (rijal) - men (plural)

مدرسة (madrassa) - school

جامعة (jami’ya) - university

كلية (kulia) - college

الجقوق (al haquq) - law

This video has a lot of good content to work with, so I will likely come back to it again later. It helps just to listen to it and see what you can understand and figure out from the context.

The Arabic word for question is سؤال (su’al) and the plural form of the word is أسئلة (asa’la).

The television program (برنامج - “barnamaj”) “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” is aired in the Middle East, in Arabic, on MBC (Center for Middle East Television) as من سيربح المليون؟. The show was once very popular in the United States. The prize on the MBC show is 2,000,000 Saudi Riyals, which is approximatley $520,000 USD.

In this segment, the contestant is answering السؤال الثامن (the eighth question), which is asking who played “Anna Karenina” on film? “Anna Karenina” is the title character of a book by Tolstoy, which was made into a film in 1935.

More about the novel and the film:
* Anna Karenina - Wikipedia (English)
* أنا كارنينا - Wikipedia (Arabic)

الحب المستحيل (al-hub al-mustahil) is the title song by Kazem Al-Saher, on his album released in 2000. حب (hub) means love or affection and مستحيل (mustahil) means impossible.

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

مقتل 100 شخص في تحطم طائرة ركاب تايلاندي
This Al Jazeera news clip is from September 2007, about a plane crash in Phuket in Thailand.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20800512/
مقتل (maqtal) - murder, death
شخص (shakhs) - person
حطم (hattama) - to wreck, smash, shatter, demolish
ركب (rakiba) - to ride, travel
طائرة (ta’ira) - airplane