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.

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 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)

The word “ask” is سأل (sa’ala).

Conjugated in the perfect (”past”) tense:

سَألت عن الاطفال - She asked about the children.

The BBC Xtra English segment from December 5, 2005 is about various terms in English for streets, including the term “lane” which is deemed “classier” and can help a property sell for more.

Again, while this segment of the BBC Xtra program is intended for Arabic speakers who are learning English, it is also very helpful for learning Arabic since they explain things in both English and Arabic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/arabic/elt/newsid_4493000/4493070.stm

Here are some Arabic words used in the BBC Xtra audio clip:

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.

In Arabic, the word “search” is بحث (bahatha). You will see this word when on the computer and when using one of Google’s Arabic language sites.

Conjugated in the perfect (”past”) tense:

بَحَثَ في الخِزانة - He searched in the closet.

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

The standard word to use for apologizing is آسف (asif) and آسفة (asifa). This word is appropriate in formal or business situations.

In casual situations, there are some other colloquial (local dialect) words to use for apologizing. In Morocco, the word سمحلي (smahali) is used to apologize. This word literally means “forgive me”. The word is appropriate to use if you are late, need to get one’s attention, etc. This is also a good word for women to know, since unfortunately harassment does happen.

There have been other incidents where men would follow me in their cars down the street - pulling up and stopping, trying to talk to me as I stomped past them, then pulling ahead again and stopping. They didn’t care if I said I had a husband, but once I said that my husband was Moroccan, their expressions morphed from leering to fearful. With lots of “smahali”s, they would zip away immediately. - (Harassment in North Africa)

If someone says “smahli” or “asif”, you can respond and say “not a problem” by saying ليست مشكلة (layset muskila) in formal situations. To respond to “smahli” in Moroccan dialect (casual situations), you can say “makaen mushkil”.

وَضَعَ (wada’a) - to put or set, lay (he put)
Here is the “past” or perfect tense conjugation for other pronouns, which involves attaching a suffix to the word root.

Use of وَضَعَ in a sentence:
وَضَعَ محمد الكِتاب على الطاولة - Mohamed put the book on the table.
وَضَعْتُ الصَندوق في الخِزانة - I put the box in the closet.
وَضَعْتْ سُكَر في الشاي - She put sugar in the tea.