The fatHa is often taught to Arabic learners as a short ‘a’ sound. However, there is no ‘a’ sound in English that resembles the fatHa. English has an unstressed ‘a’ sound, like in “about”, and it has long, stressed ‘a’ sounds, like in “cat” and “car”. These last two sounds don’t come anywhere near the sound of the fatHa. It could be argued that the fatHa is similar to the unstressed ‘a’, i.e. a schwa, but that’s not entirely accurate. And even if it were, the ‘e’ makes the same sound when it’s unstressed. Compare “dollar” and “super”. They have the same last syllable. And on top of that, the stressed ‘e’ makes a sound closer to the fatHa. For example, the first letter in “elephant” is close to the fatHa.

A good demonstration of this is the name أَحمَد. This can be romanized as “Ahmed” or “Ahmad”. When it’s romanized as “Ahmed”, English speakers tend to pronounce it as /AAH-med/. When it’s romanized as “Ahmad”, English speakers tend to pronounce it as /ah-MAAD/. In both cases, this shows that the ‘a’ has to be long when it’s stressed and is not representative of the fatHa. In Arabic, this name is pronounced with a sound more similar to the first letter in “elephant”.

Be aware, though, that this is also an approximation. If you wrote the name as “Ehmed”, English speakers would pronounce the first syllable like “eh?”, which is off the mark by a long shot. However, it’s also not actually pronounced /AAH-med/ or /ah-MAAD/ in Arabic. The two vowels in the name are closer to the first one in “elephant” (which is short) than the first one in “apple” (which is longer).

To sum up: There is no letter in English that accurately represents the fatHa in Arabic, but the ‘e’ comes closer than the ‘a’.

I just came across an audio recording of an attempted reconstruction of how the Prophet Muhammad spoke, in the Old Hijazi Arabic dialect, and I wanted to share it because it seemed like a good follow-up to my previous post (<a href="https://www.italki.com/discussion/247586" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.italki.com/discussion/247586</a>).

You can find the recording here: <a href="https://twitter.com/ArabiEdris/status/1287326136670785538" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/ArabiEdris/status/1287326136670785538</a>

The pronunciation is based on the work of the Arabic linguist Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad. Two of the biggest differences between this dialect and fusHa are the omission of the case endings in many instances and the lack of hamza. Both of these characteristics are still very common in today’s dialects.

Keep in mind that this dialect existed before fusHa was formalized/standardized, which shows that there has always been a difference between spoken and written Arabic.

(In case it needs to be said: This is a language discussion, not a religious discussion.)

I recently listened to a podcast about teaching Arabic as a foreign language. The guest, who was an Arabic linguist, made a point that really struck me. He said that non-native speakers have the right to speak a dialect just as every Arab does. Preventing them from doing so, and instead getting them to learn fusHa only, holds them hostage to a purist ideology about what we think Arabic should be. Non-native speakers have the right to enter a convenience store and talk to the shopkeeper in the natural language of the people. You can’t use them as pawns in your linguistic ideology, because it socially isolates them.

A student once told me the same thing. He said that when an Arabic teacher insists on teaching fusHa, it feels like they’re saying you’re not welcome into the local culture.

I think learners often aren’t aware of the ideology that pushes these claims that “everyone speaks fusHa” and “if you want to speak to as many people as possible, learn fusHa” and “fusHa is the correct way of speaking Arabic and all dialects are improper Arabic”. These are ideological statements rooted in a belief in the sanctity and eternality of Arabic.

If you’re an Arab who’s convinced that all Arabs speak fusHa, I invite you to go to a convenience store and try to carry a conversation in fusHa. I’ve had many experiences of Arabs struggling with elementary aspects of fusHa. Many Arabs have a passive knowledge of fusHa, which is to say that they can understand it but can’t produce correct output. Because that’s how most Arabs use it: to listen and read. If you can speak it, that’s probably because you’re a teacher or someone enthusiastic about it enough to be on a language-learning platform to help learners.

My advice as a teacher is always to learn fusHa if you want to read and write in Arabic. If you want to carry conversations and engage with the local culture, learn the dialect of said culture. If you want to be able to talk with as many Arabs as possible, learn a dialect that many people understand. I once came across a comment by a learner who said that Moroccans were more receptive when said learner was speaking in the Egyptian dialect than when speaking in fusHa. I do not find this shocking at all.

To reiterate: You have the right to learn an Arabic dialect. If a teacher insists on teaching you fusHa, you’d be better off finding another teacher. Not only is this line of thinking ideologically motivated, but it’s also rooted in an outdated approach to teaching Arabic. Arabic is such a conservative language that not only do people pretend that we still speak the language as it was spoken hundreds of years ago, but they even pretend that the method of teaching it shouldn’t be updated, that somehow updating the method is a form of defeat, and “there is nothing wrong with how we teach the language”—which, ironically, is what has gotten us to the level we’re at regarding how poorly Arabs speak fusHa. If a teacher believes in one aspect of the ideology, they likely also believe in the other.

I know this system because I’m a product of it. I’ve had to put in a lot of effort to improve my fusHa by myself. And I’ve been doing research to develop a method of teaching Arabic (both fusHa and vernacular) that’s more in line with what we know in the 21st century about second-language acquisition. This is incredibly lacking in the way Arabic is taught.

PS: The podcast is in Arabic, but if you’re interested in it, here it is: <a href="https://youtu.be/lTp8hIJKGTo" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/lTp8hIJKGTo</a>

Encontré un canal de YouTube que es muy bueno si estás buscando algo para mejorar tus habilidades de escuchar en español. El canal se llama “CuriosaMente”. Todos los videos son en español y usualmente tienen subtítulos en español también. Sin embargo, no tienen subtítulos en inglés, así que si eres principiante, podrían difícil para ti. Pero yo prefiero subtítulos en español y no inglés. Los videos son sobre muchos asuntos y tienen gráficos visuales que son útiles para ayudarte entender. Aquí es el canal: <a href="https://m.youtube.com/c/curiosamente" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://m.youtube.com/c/curiosamente</a>

También hay un canal llamado “Dreaming Spanish” que tiene videos para todos niveles: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/c/DreamingSpanish</a>

¿Tú conoces algunos canales similares?

I’ve come across many funny Arabic-to-English translations, but this one takes the cake. It’s an entire menu full of terrible translations. https://bit.ly/2ZCnphx

On offer are Arab cuisine classics such as

It’s not easy to see how the word أصبح relates to the morning, because there’s no verb that corresponds to it in English, and also because its general usage as “to become” is so common and widespread that nowadays it seems to have even superseded the more literal word for “to become” in Standard Arabic, which is صار. 

I think the best way to explain this is by way of a few examples:

.أصبح الولد مريضًا

The common understanding of this sentence is, “The boy became sick.” However, more literally, it means that he became sick in the morning, that he woke up in the morning and found himself sick.

Another example:

Imagine that you were on an overnight train to London. You went to sleep and woke up in the 

morning and found yourself in London. You can say,

.أصبحنا في لندن

In a general sense, this can simply mean that you had arrived in London. But more specifically and literally, it means that you entered the morning in London.

I find it fascinating how this word developed its more general meaning of becoming, but it makes sense. أصبح can often be replaced with صار and function the same way, although without the connotation of the time of day. So it seems to have lost its subtlety in much of its usage. However, this isn’t always the case. In some cases, أصبح has to be understood literally for it to make sense. One example I can think of is this prayer, which is recited in the morning:

.أصْبَحْنَا وَأصْبَحَ الـمُلْكُ للـهِ

(In case it needs to be said: This is a linguistic discussion, not a religious one.)

If you understand the word أصبح as simply relating to becoming, this prayer wouldn’t make sense: “We and all of creation became for God.” It would imply that at some point, creation did not belong to God. However, if you understand أصبح as denoting entering upon the morning, it makes sense: “We and all of creation entered the morning for God,” i.e. we have entered the morning and all of creation continues to belong to God. The implication here is continuation rather than becoming.

There’s a nighttime equivalent to this prayer:

.أمْسَيْنَا وأمْسَى الـمُلْكُ لِلَّـهِ

The verb أمسى is similar to أصبح but relates to مساء, i.e. nighttime.

In my opinion, this demonstrates one of the beautiful subtleties of Arabic that is often lost, even on native speakers. As I’ve mentioned, the word أصبح has a general meaning of becoming that seems to have taken over.

As a side note, and since I’m learning Spanish, there’s a verb in Spanish that has a meaning similar to أصبح, which is “amanecer”. See definition #3 here: http://www.spanishcentral.com/translate/amanecer (I’d be interested to hear from a Spanish speaker about this.)

The و, just like every other single-letter particle, is never followed by a space.

.أقرأ وأكتب

. ذهبت مع محمد وعلي

.أحب السباحة وكرة القدم

Omar Uddin is a professional Arabic calligrapher and is doing a free webinar teaching the basics of calligraphy on Friday (tomorrow) and Saturday at various times. I’m currently doing his course on Udemy and highly recommend him for anyone interested in learning Arabic calligraphy.

I have no affiliation with him; just wanted to share the information in case anyone is interested.

You can sign up here: https://myqalam.ca/intro-webinar-registration

Yesterday, another italki member asked what the difference is between أمس and البارحة, if there is any. After all, they both mean “yesterday”. This got me thinking…

The word البارحة comes from بَرَحَ, which means “he left/went away”. (If you’re familiar with كان وأخواتها, you might be familiar with this verb in its negative form ما برح, which means “he stayed/continued to be”.)

The active participle of برح is بارِح. So a person/thing that has left is called بارح.

So how did بارح become البارحة? I did some googling and found out that the term is short for الليلة البارحة, which literally means “the night that has gone”, i.e. last night.

Some dialects have extended the usage of this word to include the day that preceded said night, i.e. yesterday. (I’ve also been told that some dialects have retained its usage as “last night”.)

Now let’s go back to our question: What’s the difference between أمس and البارحة? Well, أمس means “yesterday” and can’t mean anything else. البارحة is idiomatically used to mean “yesterday”, but it can refer to any feminine thing/person that has gone.