Arabic grammar is for cool kids.

 NOTE - This post was written by my friend Rachael, not me. So she deserves all the credit. Enjoy :)

Hi! Tom asked me to write a bit about Arabic, so here I am. We met because we’re currently in the same Arabic language program in Cairo. I’m an American student studying at the University of Edinburgh for my postgraduate degree in Arab World Studies, and have been studying Arabic for 11 months (this time around). I studied Arabic for two years during my undergraduate degree, and before starting my postgraduate degree I worked for several non-profits both in my home state of North Carolina and in Washington, D.C. During that time I forgot most of my Arabic, so now I’m learning it again.  

One thing that I’ve found infinitely more interesting (and difficult) about learning Arabic this time has been working to develop both written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic, or fusHa) and spoken Arabic (Colloquial Arabic, or 3amea) at the same time.  For people who have never studied Arabic before, or know little about the language, it is difficult to explain the differences between fusHa and 3amea. For me, the easiest way to explain it is this: fusHa is sort of like Shakespearian English. We’re all required to read it in high school, and yeah, we can understand it (most of the time, anyway) but it isn’t at all the way we speak to one another. 3amea, on the other hand, is more like the everyday slang we use. But even here, in Arabic, you face difficulties. The region in which Arabic is spoken is large; it ranges from Morocco, across northern Africa, through to the Gulf and into Asia. Because of this, dialects vary widely between the different countries.  The Arabic 3amea spoken in, say, Egypt is much different than the 3amea in Lebanon.  While I’ve never learned Spanish, I’d imagine it is somewhat similar to the dialectical differences between Mexico, Venezuela, and Spain. They all speak Spanish, but with different accents and slang. 

My program in Edinburgh teaches Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Arabic simultaneously, requiring us to write everything in fusHa and speak during classes in 3amea. This is, to me, essentially as if we are learning two (or maybe three) languages at once, since we originally focused on Shami (or the dialect of Arabic found in the Levant, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine) and after five months I switched to Masri (or the dialect spoken in Egypt). Because of this, I’ve been able to notice many of the differences between the two (like the difference between I want: عايز (a3eez) in Masri vs بدي (biddi) in Shami), as well as many of the differences between 3amea in general and fusHa.  

Here are a few good examples of the differences between 3amea and fusHa. I’ll take the liberty of writing them both in Arabic script and transliteration (but know that it is a loose transliteration, as the Arabic alphabet has sounds we don’t in English).

Masri is in red, Shami in blue, and fusHa in black. 

Some simple vocabulary examples: 

Garden, park: 

                                                                                                                                                          جنينة

ganeena 

                                                                                                                                                           حديقة 

hadee’a

حديقة

HadeeQa

Last year:

السنة اللي فاتت

as-senna illi fatit

السنة الماضية

as-senna al-maDiyya 

السنة الماضية

as-senna al-maDiyya 

I watched the game yesterday. 

انا اتفرجت على الماتش امبارح.

Ana itfaragt 3ala al-match imbaraH. 

انا شفت الماتش امبارح. 

Ana shuft al-match imbaraH. 

انا شاهدت المباراة أمس. 

Ana shaahidtuu al-mubarah ams. 

I went to America last summer. 

انا روحت امريكا الصيف اللي فات. 

Ana roHt amreeka asSef illi fat.

انا روحت الى امريكا الصيف الماضي. 

Ana roHt ila amreeka asSef al-maaDi. 

انا ذهبت إلى الولايات المتحدة الصيف الماضي.

Ana thahabtuu ila al-welayat al-mutaHeeda al-Seef al-maaDi. 

As you can see, there are wide variations between all of these.  These examples were meant to demonstrate differences in vocabulary, however there are, of course, grammatical differences as well. 

Negations are one clear example of grammatical differences. There are four main negations in Arabic: negation of a nominal sentence (no verb), negation of past, negation of present, and negation of future. I’ll use Masri (red) and fusHa (purple) to illustrate the differences in negation in Arabic. 

Nominal Sentence: 

He is not happy/ 

She is not happy. 

هو مش مبصوط. 

 هي مش مبصوطة.

Huwa mish mabSoout. (masculine)

Heeya mish mabSooutah. (feminine)

هو ليس صعيد. 

 هي ليست صعيدة. 

Huwa laysa sa3eed. (masculine)

Heeya laysat sa3eedah. (feminine)

As you can see, Masri uses the word ‘mish’ to negate, whereas fusHa uses ‘laysa.’ Unlike ‘mish,’ which doesn’t conjugate, ‘laysa’ conjugates (so to speak, as it isn’t a verb) to agree with the subject. So as you can see above, for he ‘laysa’ stays the same, but for she, it becomes ‘laysat’ (for I, ‘laystu,’ we, ‘laysna’, etc). 

Verbal Sentences:

Past

He didn’t write the book. 

هو ماكتبس الكتاب. 

Huwa ma ketabsh al-ketab.

هو لم يكتب الكتاب.

Huwa lem yektub al-ketab. 

Present

He isn’t writing the book.

هو مايكتبش الكتاب.

Huwa ma yektibsh al-ketab.

هو لا يكتب الكتاب.

Huwa la yektub al-ketab. 

Future

He will not write the book.

هو مش هيكتب الكتاب.

Huwa mish hayektib al-ketab.

هو لن يكتب الكتاب. 

Huwa len yektub al-ketab. 

As you can see, negations gets to be a little tricky.  For Masri, variations of ‘mish’ are used (generally, sandwiching the verb in between the ma- and -ish bits). But for fusHa, there is a different negation for every tense (past: ‘lem,’ present: ‘la,’ future: ‘len’) and the verb comes after (I won’t go into the grammar of how you treat a negated verb in fusHa, but know that just using lem, la, and len only gets you most of the way there). 

As you can see, the road to learning Arabic is a bit like falling down a rabbit hole. You start simple, maybe just learning Modern Standard Arabic or just learning Colloquial Arabic. But soon, as you progress, you realize you want to be able to speak to actual Arabs, or to be able to read the news. So you begin to learn whichever you weren’t already studying. If that is MSA, well then lord help you because it will be years before you feel as though you’ve mastered it. With 3amea, things come a bit easier. But then you realize, hey, there are so many other dialects out there, what am I doing just studying one? So you begin to look at another, and another, and... well, you see what I mean. 

It sometimes seems like an endless dark tunnel of Arabic, with scary grammar rules jumping out at you and the never-ending parades of flashcards haunting your dreams. But, if you’re anything like me, you’ll keep going. You will keep trying, because one day you’ll overhear somebody speaking Arabic back in your hometown (where you never, ever thought you’d hear it) and get so excited you introduce yourself and ask where they’re from (in Arabic, tab3aan). Or you will buy the first Harry Potter in Arabic and think to yourself, I’ve read this twenty times in English, how hard could it be in Arabic? And get through the first six pages in about two weeks, Google Translate on standby at all times (yep, that’s me right now). But then, you’ll come across one part, one beautiful, tiny, small passage that may only be one or two sentences long but you completely understand it. 

Nothing feels better than that.