MATSEC AM Arabic flashcards
MATSEC AM Arabic · Build recall with a focused review session.
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- Triliteral root (جذر ثلاثي)
- Most Arabic words derive from a root of three consonants carrying a core meaning; the vowel pattern and affixes built round it produce related words, e.g. ك-ت-ب gives كتاب, كاتب, مكتبة.
- Form II verb فَعَّلَ
- Pattern with a doubled middle radical, usually causative or intensive: عَلِمَ (to know) becomes عَلَّمَ (to teach). Very productive for forming verbs from nouns and adjectives.
- Form X اِسْتَفْعَلَ
- Pattern with prefixed اِسْت, typically meaning to seek or request: غَفَرَ → اِسْتَغْفَرَ (to ask forgiveness); عَلِمَ → اِسْتَعْلَمَ (to inquire).
- Idafa first-term rules
- In an idafa the first noun takes no ال and no tanwin, while the second stands in the genitive; an adjective describing the first noun follows the whole phrase: كتابُ الطالبِ الجديدُ.
- إنّ and its sisters
- إنّ، أنّ، كأنّ، لكنّ، ليت، لعلّ put the following noun in the accusative and the predicate in the nominative: إنّ الطالبَ مجتهدٌ. They reverse what كان does.
- Diptote (ممنوع من الصرف)
- A noun barred from tanwin; in the genitive it takes fatha rather than kasra. Typical triggers: the أَفْعَل pattern, فَعْلان, مَفَاعِل plurals, and feminine names ending in alif.
- Hollow verb (فعل أجوف)
- A verb whose middle radical is و or ي, such as قال and باع. The weak radical shifts or disappears in the imperfect and imperative: يقول, يبيع, قُل, بِع.
- Non-human plural agreement
- Broken plurals of things and animals take feminine singular agreement on verbs, pronouns and adjectives: وصلتِ الكتبُ الجديدةُ (the new books arrived). Human plurals agree normally.
- Absolute object (مفعول مطلق)
- A verbal noun in the accusative that repeats or reinforces the verb's meaning, often with a qualifying adjective: فرحَ فرحًا شديدًا (he rejoiced greatly). It answers how the action happened.
- VSO to SVO shift
- Arabic normally places the verb first, English the subject. Reorder before translating: وصلَ الرئيسُ إلى مالطا becomes 'The President arrived in Malta', never a verb-initial English sentence.
- Generic definite singular
- A definite singular in Arabic often states a general truth and becomes an English bare plural: الأسدُ حيوانٌ مفترسٌ = 'Lions are predatory animals', not 'the lion is a predatory animal'.
- كان plus imperfective
- كان followed by an imperfect verb renders past continuous or habitual action in English: كان يدرسُ كلَّ ليلةٍ = 'He used to study every night' or 'He was studying every night'.
- سوف versus سـ prefix
- Both mark the future, but سوف usually signals the remoter or more deliberate future and سـ the near or immediate one: سوف نسافر العام القادم versus سنسافر غدًا.
- Verb-noun collocations
- Arabic prefers fixed verb-noun pairs where English uses one verb: اتخذ قرارًا = decide, أجرى بحثًا = conduct research, قدّم اقتراحًا = propose. Literal single-word renderings sound wrong.
- أما ... فـ topicalisation
- أما introduces a contrasted topic and فـ marks its comment: أما الطقسُ فباردٌ = 'As for the weather, it is cold'. English drops أما and renders فـ with a comma or 'as for'.
- Contrast marker بيد أنّ
- بيد أنّ (however, yet) introduces a qualification reversing the previous claim; like لكن and غير أنّ it signals that the writer is about to disagree with or limit what was just said.
- Result marker لذلك
- لذلك (therefore), together with من ثمّ and بناءً على ذلك, signals a conclusion drawn from earlier statements; in comprehension questions it flags where the argument lands.
- Attribution قال إنّ
- قال إنّ, أعلن أنّ, أشار إلى أنّ introduce reported speech or opinion. The following clause is the speaker's claim, not necessarily the writer's, so answers must attribute it correctly.
- Anaphoric ذلك and هذا
- ذلك usually points back to something already mentioned, while هذا can point back or forward. Tracking what each demonstrative replaces is essential for reference questions.
- Negation particles لم and ليس
- لم plus jussive negates past action ('did not'); ليس negates a nominal sentence in the present. Meanwhile لن negates the future and لا negates the present indicative.
- Arabic punctuation ، ؛ ؟
- Arabic uses ، for the comma, ؛ for the semicolon and ؟ for the question mark, all written right-to-left. The full stop and colon look as in English, but spacing and direction differ.
- Essay introduction (مقدمة)
- A strong Arabic introduction states the topic in a nominal sentence, narrows it, then declares the writer's position. Announcing merely that the topic is important wastes the opening.
- Cohesive device من ناحية أخرى
- Means 'on the other hand' and opens a contrasting body paragraph. Near-equivalents are في المقابل and على العكس, whereas فضلًا عن ذلك adds a further point rather than contrasting.
- Formal letter opening
- Standard formal Arabic letters open with تحية طيبة وبعد، after the greeting and close with وتفضلوا بقبول فائق الاحترام. Colloquial greetings such as أهلاً are wrong in this register.
- Essay conclusion (خاتمة)
- The conclusion restates the thesis in fresh wording, sums the main evidence and ends with a recommendation or prediction; it introduces no new argument, only consolidates what was argued.
- المعلقات
- Canonical pre-Islamic odes (seven or ten) held to be the summit of Jahili poetry; Imruʾ al-Qays's opens قفا نبكِ, and the typical qasida moves from nasib to journey to praise or boasting.
- al-Mutanabbi
- Tenth-century Abbasid poet (d. 965) famed for panegyric addressed to Sayf al-Dawla and for epigrammatic lines of wisdom; his assertive, ornate style made him the most quoted classical Arab poet.
- Maqama (مقامة)
- A short narrative in ornate rhymed prose (سجع) built around a trickster hero; pioneered by Badiʿ al-Zaman al-Hamadhani and perfected by al-Hariri in the eleventh century.
- Naguib Mahfouz
- Egyptian novelist (1911–2006) who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Arab writer to do so; best known for the Cairo Trilogy beginning with بين القصرين.
- Free verse (الشعر الحر)
- Mid-twentieth-century Arabic form abandoning the single metre and monorhyme of the qasida for variable line lengths; associated with Nazik al-Mala'ika and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab.
- Muwashshah (موشح)
- Strophic Andalusian song-poem in classical or colloquial Arabic, with a refrain and a closing kharja; it broke with the monorhyme and structural unity of the classical qasida.
- Kalila wa Dimna
- Arabic collection of animal fables translated from Middle Persian by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in the eighth century; a founding text of Arabic prose and of mirror-for-princes literature.