NEW EDITION C O L L O Q U I A L A R A B I C (LEVANTINE) The Complete Course for Beginners Leslie McLoughlin
Colloquial Arabic (Levantine)
The Colloquial Series Series Adviser: Gary King The following languages are available in the Colloquial series: Afrikaans Albanian Amharic Arabic (Levantine) Arabic of Egypt Arabic of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia Basque Bengali Breton Bulgarian Cambodian Cantonese Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish French German Greek Gujarati Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Malay Mongolian Norwegian Panjabi Persian Polish Portuguese Portuguese of Brazil Romanian Russian Scottish Gaelic Serbian Slovak Slovene Somali Spanish Spanish of Latin America Swahili Swedish Tamil Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yoruba COLLOQUIAL 2s series: The Next Step in Language Learning Chinese Dutch French German (forthcoming) Italian Portuguese of Brazil Russian Spanish Spanish of Latin America All these Colloquials are available in book and CD packs, or separately. You can order them through your bookseller or via our website www.routledge.com.
Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) Leslie McLoughlin
First published 1982 by Routledge Second edition published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 1982, 2009 Leslie McLoughlin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McLoughlin, Leslie J., 1935 Colloquial Arabic Levantine : Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan / Leslie J. McLoughlin. p. cm. (Colloquial series) 1. Arabic language Dialects Syria. 2. Arabic language Dialects Lebanon. 3. Arabic language Dialects Palestine. 4. Arabic language Dialects Jordan. I. Title. PJ6813.M34 2008 492.7 70956 dc22 2008008363 ISBN13: 978-0-415-44857-4 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-44861-1 (audio CDs) ISBN13: 978-0-415-44860-4 (pack) ISBN13: 978-0-415-47109-1 (MP3) ISBN13: 978-1-315-74162-8 (ebook Pack)
Contents Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 Introduction to Arabic pronunciation 13 Part 1 The units 21 1 Basic sentences for communication 23 2 To have and have not : possession and 32 pronouns 3 Verbs, word order and demonstratives 42 4 Where s the action? or more about verbs 53 5 Participles, active and passive 65 6 When we were young... : hollow verbs and to be able 73 7 Verbs, defective and doubled: a walk on the wild side... 83 8 Workers of the world, unite! 95 9 Who was that lady I saw you with last night? 104 10 Four-letter words : whatever next? 114 11 If she-goats could only fly 122 Part 2 All the other things you have to know in order to have a meaningful conversation in Arabic 135 12 Idioms 137
vi Contents 13 O my teacher! : terms of address and reference 148 14 Proverbs 154 15 Courtesy expressions for various occasions 158 16 A cautionary tale: how not to learn Arabic 163 17 A miscellany 167 18 Concepts in society 176 19 Abuse: do not try this at home... 183 Part 3 Appendices 185 A Grammar, indexed by unit 187 B Vocabulary: English Arabic and Arabic English 189 C Arabic script for beginners 214 D The twenty-two members of the Arab League 220 E Bibliography 221 Key to exercises 222 Please email AcademiceBooksSupport@informa.com with proof of purchase to obtain access to the supplementary content for this ebook. An access code and instructions will be provided.
Abbreviations adj. adjective BRP British Received Pronunciation c. common (of gender) CA Classical Arabic Coll.A. colloquial/dialectal Arabic conj. conjunction f. feminine lit. literally m. masculine n. noun pl. plural prep. preposition pron. pronoun s. Sura (Chapter in the Koran) sing. singular s.o. someone s.t. something v. verse of the Koran vb verb v.n. verbal noun
Introduction 1 Introduction Wisdom has alighted on three things: the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of the Arabs. (P.K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition, p. 91) The beauty of man lies in the eloquence of his tongue. (Arabic sayings) The language I have learn d these forty years... (Shakespeare, King Richard II) The Arabic language in the world Arabic is the language of daily communication for some 325 million native speakers. It is a working language of the United Nations, as are French and Spanish, but Arabic has four times more native speakers than French and about the same number as Spanish. More importantly, Arabic is the language of Islam: l l l l It is the language in which the Koran was originally recited, from early in the seventh century AD. From that time Muslims have heard the call to prayer five times daily in Arabic. Throughout fourteen centuries Muslims all over the world have been reciting their prayers in Arabic. The Pilgrimage or Hajj a duty for all Muslims, if they are able is made to Makkah and Madina in Saudi Arabia. One result of the the unique status of Arabic is that your efforts to use Arabic will always be appreciated enormously. Another result of the status of Arabic as the language of Islam is that any foreigner who knows Arabic, and especially Classical Arabic
2 Introduction (CA), can always find in any Muslim country in the world someone who knows the language, particularly at a mosque. The Koran was revealed around the year 610 AD and before that Arabic was the language only of the Arabian Peninsula and was, by and large, known only slightly in the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Iraq and so on. It was the spread of Islam which brought Arabic to the whole of North Africa, which has remained Arabic-speaking to this day, as have Iraq, Syria, etc. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean Arabic is as much a part of Maltese as Latin and Greek and Anglo-Saxon are of English. Furthermore, in Andalucia many place names are clearly Arabic in origin such as Gualdalquivir, The Great Valley or Al-Wadi Al-Kabeer. To this day Spaniards say If God wills... in a version of the Arabic expression. This is ojala, a corruption of the Arabic Inshallah. Although there are some one thousand million Muslims all over the world there is no authorized translation of the Koran. It is a Muslim belief that the language in which Allah revealed the Koran (kalaam allaah = The Word of Allah) to the Prophet Muhammad has qualities which make it impossible to use any other language to convey the same meaning. Verily we have sent it down as an Arabic Qur an in order that you may understand. (s. Yusuf, v. 2) The Arabic script may well be the second most familiar script in the world after Latin. It is used not only in Arabic but in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, Urdu, in Afghan languages and in Malay, among others. The Koran is not only a book of revelation but it can be viewed as the first book in Classical Arabic (CA). As a result it is the model for the correct writing of CA. The Koran is certainly the world s best-selling book in Arabic and any search engine on the Internet will show nearly 12 million entries (depending on whether one searches for Koran or Quran.) To give you an idea of how Arabic is viewed by Muslims, here is the command of the Caliph Umar enjoining the spread of Arabic because The study of the Arabic language rejuvenates the mind and increases virtue.
Introduction 3 The Arabic written language The Arabic alphabet CN2TWPM 3VS3L3G See Appendix C. Modern written Arabic is almost completely uniform in all the twentytwo countries which are members of the Arab League. Not only do the printed media books, magazines and newspapers use the same language but that same language, read aloud, is used on radio and television. This spoken medium is not used in everyday speech, except in formal situations such as a public address, for example, in an airport departure lounge or a flight announcement. It could also be used in a public lecture, a sermon in church or mosque or in formal lessons at school or university. Native Arabic speakers, literate or otherwise, are accustomed to hearing this formal medium even though it is used only by professionals such as lecturers and professors, men of religion, whether Christian or Muslim, politicians and statesmen. (The late King Hussein of Jordan was particularly eloquent in using this medium.) The varieties of spoken Arabic What form of Arabic do Arabs use in everyday speech? The short answer is that they speak the dialect of Arabic which they learned at their mothers knee. But it is extremely important for non-arabs to understand how the dialects of Arabic relate to CA. There is a clear line of descent from CA to the language of Arabic newspapers and books of today. Fundamentally the script is the same, the grammar is almost identical, the vocabulary is very similar and the sounds have been carefully maintained over fourteen centuries, through the recitation of the Koran, the call to prayer, the recitation of poetry and so on. For this reason we have a very clear idea of how Arabic sounded in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. This does not mean, however, that the dialects of, say, Kuwait and Morocco sound very similar or that speakers of those dialects can immediately understand each other. There is a great variety in spoken Arabic, as is only to be expected because languages evolve over long periods. When Arabic began to spread from the Arabian
4 Introduction Peninsula the language of England was Anglo-Saxon but this is now a foreign language to modern speakers of English, and we have no clear idea of how it was pronounced. There is also the effect of geography since distance can cause languages to develop differently in different regions. This is obvious for English in a country such as the United States of America but the Arabic-speaking world covers a much greater area. The Mediterranean is over 4,000 km long and there is an even greater north south distance from the Turkish border to southern Sudan, while from Somalia to Sierra Leone (via Sudan) the distance is over 7,000 km. And so if you want to say What do you want? in Arabic there is great variety: Egypt Saudi Arabia Lebanon 9aayiz ayy? aysh tibgha? shoo btreed? However, the most important thing to note is that all these and other expressions of What do you want? use words which come from CA which have been modified in each dialect area. The expression of ideas in the dialects can be seen to be related to CA. Overall, the similarities between the dialects are more important than the differences. In Europe we have what may seem a similar situation, in that French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (and even Romanian) can be related to Latin. However, with Arabic there is a very important difference: the dialects will never become national languages with their own literatures, as happened with the dialects which became the Romance Languages, French, Italian and so on. The reason is the very high, indeed sacred, status of CA. Because Arabic was the language of the revelation of the Koran nothing can be allowed which would demean the status of CA. Hence it is impossible to have books or magazines in colloquial or dialectal Arabic as that would detract from the elevated status of CA. The only possible exceptions are children s books and comic strips, and even these are frowned on. The same goes for the kind of inventive language used by the young mainly in text messages. Speakers of Romance languages cannot in general understand speakers of another Romance language except where, as between Spanish and Portuguese, there is an approximate understanding. In the Arab world, however, it is possible for native speakers from very
Introduction 5 different areas to understand each other. If they are from the Levant, Iraq or Egypt for instance, it is perfectly possible for native speakers, especially if they are educated, to understand speakers from another country. This is certainly much more the case today: there is now much more direct contact between speakers of different dialects than was the case in 1960, when I first learned Arabic myself. Levantine Arabic The term Levant is now out of fashion as a description of the Arabic countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and Jordan but readers can savour the delights of the area in the memoirs of a member of the Levant Consular Service, Lawrence Grafftey-Smith, who wrote the greatest ever work of British diplomatic reminiscences, Bright Levant. On page 1 he says of the Levant: There I, too, found a lifetime s enchantment. Levantine Arabic denotes the Arabic spoken by some 40 million people, the natives of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan and some parts of Israel inhabited by native Arabic speakers, both Christian and Muslim. (Many Jewish Israelis also speak Arabic.) This type of Arabic is also familiar throughout the Arab world and further afield because of the Palestinian diaspora. There are millions of descendants of Palestinians expelled from their place of birth. In the first flood of refugees from November 1947 to May 1948 some 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes and lands. Further forced emigration took place following the Six Day War of 1967 and now millions of Palestinians live outside Palestine, whether in refugee camps or settled in Europe or the USA and in many other countries. (In the market in Tallinn in 2007 I met an Estonian trader, born in Palestine, now assisted by his son, born in Estonia of an Estonian mother.) There are also hundreds of thousands of Palestinians working in Arab countries, especially in the Gulf countries and in Saudi Arabia. Similarly, there is a large presence in other countries of Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrians. Syria actually has a Minister for Emigrés while it is estimated that for a population of four million Lebanon has some 16 million people abroad who are of Lebanese descent. A Lebanese joke from the 1960s is:
6 Introduction Q. What is the population of Lebanon? A. Three million overseas and a million at home for the purposes of reproduction. Emigration from the Levant to North and South America was common from the nineteenth century, as could be seen from the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912: around a hundred of the victims were from Lebanon and Syria. Another reminder of emigration from the Levant is the large proportion of leading figures in Brazil with names which are clearly Arabic. During the Civil War (1975 1990) there was a considerable influx of Lebanese to the United Kingdom, as there was to France and in particular to Paris. Common to all these populations is a strong tendency to have their children continue to learn Arabic. Levantine Arabic is also familiar to the whole Arab world since satellite TV is broadcast from all the countries of the region, putting out all manner of programmes in colloquial dialectal Arabic (Coll.A.): historical dramas, comedies, sit-coms, lengthy soaps and so on. Within Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan there is clear evidence to be heard of close similarity between many dialects. The differences are what you would expect, in that a fisherman from Sidon would use different idioms from, say, a merchant from landlocked Aleppo. Equally one finds differences between one area and another in terms of intonation: many foreigners find Lebanese Arabic to have a sing-song quality not found in, say, Amman. There is another striking feature of language in this area: the way in which certain words have preserved a particular pronunciation for centuries because of the effect of previous isolation and local pride. The classic example is the English word shibboleth taken from the Semitic word for an ear of corn. In the Old Testament (Judges, 12: 6) it was a matter of life and death whether one said shibboleth or sibboleth. Today this difference between /sh/ and /s/ frequently marks the difference between one village and another nearby. And today the Arabic for ear of corn is still sunbula. This book aims to present those features of the language which would be acceptable throughout the whole Levant area. The speech presented is not, on the one hand, the dialect of any particular village or area; nor is it, on the other, a debased CA spoken by no one in particular. The aim is to present a natural form of speech which is acceptable and at the same time idiomatic and correct. The recordings are a crucially important part of the package.
Introduction 7 An Arabic proverb says A new language is a new man, and among other things this means that a non-arab approaching Arabic has to be ready to understand if not necessarily to imitate different attitudes and perspectives. In everyday speech Westerners are not given, as Arabs are, to quoting poetry, ancient proverbs and extracts from holy books. Nor are they wont especially the British to exchange fulsome greetings. This is to say nothing of the different attitudes to physical contact and proximity, as well as to relations between the sexes. It is, however, essential to understand not only the grammar and vocabulary of the Arabic of this area but also the underlying attitudes and assumptions, which may be expressed in words or in non-verbal form. The second part of the book, especially Unit 18, gives essential linguistic information on these matters. Perhaps the greatest difference between the Levantine approach to language and that of non-arabs and especially Westerners is that Levantines, like most Arabs, take pleasure in language for its own sake. For example, Arabic may be unique in that it has a separate word (samara) for to chat [to s.o.] in the evening but it goes further. A common forename, with both male and female forms, comes from this verb and means the kind of person you would wish to chat to in the evening (Samir/Samira). In village communities and in cities a form of evening entertainment is the sahra, which may consist of language alone, in the form of conversation only or conversation with poetry to be listened to and improvised, jokes, stories, quizzes and so on. The talk is of a kind forgotten in the West except in isolated communities such as Irish villages or Swiss mountain communities talk not merely comical, tragical, historical-pastoral, etc. but talk ranging over poetry, story-telling from ancient times, anecdotes, jokes, word-games, singing and acting. The moral for the non-arab is that if one can adjust to these different attitudes to language and understand what is going on one can discover whole layers of Arab life which must remain unsuspected to those who do not know Arabic or who remain addicted to the view that only CA is a fit object of study. For me it is clear that a real understanding and appreciation of Coll.A. can only expand a student s knowledge of CA. A student who understood all the allusions to poetry, proverbs and religion to be heard in a day s march to quote Belloc in the Levant would be far beyond doctoral standards in terms of university study. I
8 Introduction would also suggest that Lebanese Arabic is much maligned by many Orientalists whereas it has been shown that in everyday speech some 80 per cent of its vocabulary is of classical origin. The structure of Arabic To specialists in language teaching You may detect a certain old-fashioned approach here, even a hint of the Grammar/Translation Method, but this book is firmly based on using the unique features of Arabic that distinguish it from other languages. These are the ten most important features which are common to both written and spoken Arabic: 1 The most important fact about Arabic is that it is a Semitic language. Arabic is not of the same family as Persian (Farsi) or Turkish. As a Semitic language, it is of the same family as Hebrew, Aramaic (the language of Christ, still spoken in Syria and Iraq), Syriac (the liturgical language of the Maronite Church) and Amharic, the language of Ethiopia. This is why so many Hebrew words are very similar to Arabic, such as: Hebrew Arabic English shalom salaam Peace rosh hashanah ras as sana New Year yom kippur yawm al-kafaara Day of Atonement 2 Semitic languages are distinguished by the triliteral root. Hebrew Arabic English sh/l/m s/l/m Peace In Arabic the consonants k - t - b imply s.t. to do with writing and words related to writing are formed from these three consonants. Hence:
Introduction 9 Arabic kaatib English writer, author, clerk, typist, registrar, scribe, amanuensis, penman, scrivener, secretary, actuary, notary, etc. (This word also shows that Arabic vocabulary is more succinct than English, which has abundant synonyms taken from many languages, especially Latin and Greek.) maktab place of writing: office, desk, etc. maktaba place of books, library kitaab book maktoob a thing written, a letter (It can also mean: That is Fate, i.e. It has been written, by Allah ) 3 Arabic has a highly developed system of root and pattern. A pattern is imposed which gives a particular sense to the consonants of the root, as we saw in (2) above. To show the pattern the consonants will be written below as C. In writer the pattern C-aa-Ci-C kaatib always means the person doing the action. In office the pattern ma-c-c-a-c maktab always means place of doing the action. In letter the pattern ma-c-c-oo-c maktoob always means having had the action done to it, i.e. written (the passive participle). 4 In Arabic there is predictability while in English there is very little. Take three English words which have the same pattern but which change in unpredictable ways: Present tense light fight sight Past tense lit fought sighted
10 Introduction For Arabic verbs you can be sure that the pattern will work consistently. In CA a verb in the past tense for I will always end in the syllable /-tu/. For the present tense the verb for I will always begin with /-a/: I write aktub I wrote katabtu 5 Arabic is consistent. (a) If you know the correct sound of a word you can spell it correctly. You do not have what we find in English: seen/scene bean/been dun/done nigh/deny dough/laugh In Arabic the consonants and vowels always have a consistent sound, so that when you see a word written correctly you will be able to pronounce it correctly. (b) The initial letter of the name of the consonant in Arabic gives you the correct pronunciation of that consonant. In English the letter h tells you nothing of the sound /h/. The name of the /h/ sound in Arabic is /haa/. The name of the sound /f/ in Arabic is /faa/ but the English equivalent begins with /e/ ( eff ). 6 Arabic is extremely economical. (a) Arabic has only two tenses, past and non-past, but can render any tense we use in English, such as he had been writing, he would have written, etc. (b) Arabic has only three vowels, /a/, /i/ and /u/ (each in a long and a short form), where English has many shades of vowel, based loosely on a, e, i, o and u. (c) Arabic has just two diphthongs: roughly /ay/ (as in the name of the English letter A) and /aw/ (roughly the /o/ sound in mower ). (d) In CA the three short vowels mentioned are used to cover all case endings and verb endings, and to mark the difference between pronouns. For example, the sound /i/ or /ee/ is always used in CA to mark the feminine singular in verbs and pronouns. (e) The same applies in Coll.A. but even more so. Coll.A. has almost no case endings and verb endings are far fewer than in CA. 7 Sentence structure in Arabic is marked by simplicity. (a) In equational sentences there is no verb is/are.
Introduction 11 The man is strong = The man strong The men are strong = The men strong (b) To say there is or there are, a short word fee is used which is invariable. There is a book fee kitaab (c) Levantine Arabic like many Arabic dialects typically expresses a great deal of meaning in very truncated phrases. English How could you possibly say such a thing/miss the point? OK, that s quite enough of that! There s s.t. (but not much) in what you say. Levantine Arabic wayn-ak? (lit. Where are you? ) bass! ya9nee The Arabic word can also mean: What I mean to say is... Or I agree to a certain extent... In Le Monde of 9 October 2007, quoting Avi Dichter, Israeli Minister for Public Security, we find how this little word now has importance on the world stage: We can, said the Minister, no longer tolerate the culture of ya9nee, this Palestinian way of saying neither Yes nor No. Further examples of simplicity and economy in expression are: Right, let s get on with it, then! OK, we re agreed, there s nothing more to be said. (And many more meanings since the root means finish.) yallah! khalaas! 8 Stress patterns. There are no highly elaborate rules for where the stress or emphasis falls in words. Generally the stress falls on the first syllable except when the word has a long syllable. In that case the stress falls on the nearest long syllable to the end of the word. (See below in the Introduction to Arabic pronunciation.)
12 Introduction 9 Coll.A. has many formal, set expressions, and many use the name of God, such as God bless you! to mean, for example, Thank you. These expressions deal with most social situations, e.g. arrivals, farewells, weddings, funerals, condolences, birthdays, when entering or leaving s.o. s house, or greeting s.o. returning from a journey and even wishing strength and fitness to s.o. working with his/her hands. However, it is not the case that one has to learn a huge range of florid and deeply insincere expressions. Among the most important of guiding rules is that, especially in the Levant, an Arabic speaker expects to give and receive a warm welcome. 10 Intonation. The non-arab should pay particular attention to the way the voice rises and falls. Failure to do this is the clearest mark of a foreigner speaking Arabic badly. The sound recordings are invaluable as a model to imitate. They are especially valuable when facing the problem of transliteration, i.e. rendering Arabic colloquial sounds in a non-arabic alphabet. Transliteration is a necessary evil but it has two main advantages for a beginner. It is easier for the foreigner to read than Arabic script but in addition even Arabic script is not necessarily a better way of rendering certain vowels and consonants. The Arabic script is perfect for rendering the written language but cannot cope with all features of Coll.A. For example: English book his book Arabic kitaab kitaabo The Arabic suffix for his is almost exactly like the English British Received Pronunciation (BRP) /o/ (with more rounding than in English) but there is no Arabic letter which can render that sound any better than transliteration can. The system of transliteration used in this book uses only symbols found on an ordinary keyboard designed for the English language. Most of the apparent difficulties involved in transliteration disappear when full use is made of the recordings.
Arabic script for beginners 221 Appendix E Bibliography Cowell, M.W., Ryding, K. and Nydell, M., A Reference Grammar of Syrian Arabic, Georgetown University, 1964. Farha, H.T., Courtesy Expressions in Spoken Arabic, Beirut, 1971. Nasr, R.T., An English Colloquial Arabic Dictionary, Beirut, 1974. Stowasser, K. and Ani, M., Dictionary of Syrian Arabic, Georgetown University, 2004. There are many excellent books on Lebanese and Syrian Arabic by French or francophone scholars, such as many Jesuit scholars from the Université St. Joseph, Beirut; Vincent Monteil and others who have been based in Damascus at IFEAD, the Institut français des études arabes à Damas. German scholars also, especially those based in Beirut with the Deutsche Morgenlandgesellschaft, have produced much work on Levantine Arabic. At the present time, 2008, Georgetown University is actively carrying out a programme of reviving classic works for the teaching of Arabic, spoken and written. And the best book for beginners for the Arabic script is: Mitchell, T.F., Writing Arabic: A Practical Introduction to Ruq ah Script, Oxford University Press, 1979.