Arabic/XisY

Equational Sentences
Here are some examples of Equational sentences in English: The boy is big. The girl is small. The girl is big. The man is tall.

Remember the following:


 * 1) "the" =ال(el/èl)
 * 2) ال(el) always connects to the word following it, it leaves no space between it and the word it connects to.
 * 3) There is no word for "a" in Arabic.

First let's translate the first sentence: The boy is big. So what we need to know is the word for "boy" and "big" in Arabic. The word for "the" in Arabic (it is "ال" (el)). The word for "is" can be ignored.

boy=وَلَد waladuń (wa-lad)

big= كَبـِيـْر kabiiruń (ka-biir)

So now we have the words boy and big.

ولد كبير

(wa-lad—ka-biir) waladuń kabiiruń wa-la-dun-ka-biir A big boy.

But we wanted to say "The boy is big", we did not want to say "a big boy". Let's try again. I must have forgotten something. Can you guess what it is. I forgot the word ال el. I need that word to indicate "the boy" instead of "boy/a boy". Let's add it to the word that means boy. ولد walad means boy.

ال +ولد كبير

الولد كبير

(al-wa-lad—ka-biir) el waladu kabiiruń al-wa-la-du-ka-biir The boy is big.

The first word means "the boy" the second means "big". So how come there was no word meaning "is" in the sentence, you might ask. This is because in Arabic "is" is not used for such sentences, it is understood, by the sentence structure (the way the words are placed).

The sentence structure of The  _______   is/are   ________. in Arabic is. الـ ــــــــ        ــــــــــ (al)____________     ___________

The first word has "ال" and the second word doesn't. That is all.

Now here are some examples, memorize these, and practice building your own:

الرجل كبير el rajulu kabiiruń al-ra-jul-ka-biir (ar-ra-jul—ka-biir) The man is big.

الرجل رجل el rajulu rajuluń ar-ra-ju-lu-ra-jul (ar-ra-jul—ra-jul) The man is a man.

الإمرأة إمرأة el imra'ätu imra'ätuń. al-im-ra-a-tu-im-ra-ah (al-im-ra-a--im-ra-a) The woman is a woman.

Vocabulary to learn: كبير (ka-biir) big

جـميل beautiful