Manual of Palestinean Arabic, for Self-Instruction
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( to ^ :3 m MANUAL OF PALESTINEAN ARABIC FOR SELF-INSTRUCTION BY H. H. SPOER M. A. PH. D. (N. Y. Univ.) B. D. (Rutgers CoU.) Sometime Fellow of The American School of Archaeology and Oriental Research in Jerusalem. AND E.^NASRALLAH HADDAD Teacher of Arabic at the Teachers' Seminary of the Syrisches Waisenhaus in Jerusalem. JERUSALEM 1909. PREFACE. stanctan The present volume has grown out of a need — which I have abundant reason to suppose that others as well as myself have experienced — for some means of acquiring a knowledge of the Arabic dialect spoken, not only in Jerusalem, but with some slight variations, in the whole of Palestine, to-day. Such manuals as already exist in English are, for the most part, adapted for the Egyptian Arabic, or for the Libanese such as is spoken in Beirut and in the north, or for other special districts, and may be misleading, especially in nomenclature, to such as have learnt no Arabic whatever; and confusing to those who, like my- self, when I came into this part of the country six years ago, are students of the classical language only. Such manuals, moreover, contain many words which occur only in modern, literary Arabic, and which, as not belonging to the vernacular and not understood by the populace, have, in this volume, been carefully excluded. I have sought to adapt this work to the Arabic student interested in the dialect as such, as well as to those requiring the language for daily use iu Palestine ; also to the passing traveller seeking to make himself understood, and to understand those about him. In these days of multiplication of railways, hotels, and other conveniences of travel, when the often obtrusive dragoman is happily becoming less of a necessity, the demand for a practical phrase-book is increasingly urgent. The necessary limits of such a Manual obviously preclude the possibility of presenting a Grammar which is exhaustive, even in regard to the vernacular; it is how- ever hoped that it may be found to include all that is necessary for such practical use as has been suggested. The Latin script has been used throughout, in order to give the precise pronounciation, each word being transliterated as uttered in the vernacular, regardless of its form in literary Arabic from which there are many deviations, especially in the s sounds. The literary - IV - Arabic gives us, for example, faias "a mare" while the vernacular has fara§. The cojisonant t is sometimes pronounced as t, d as a, or s as z. These changes being characteristic of the c^i' ^quial Arabic, the fact of such differences is not indicated, as th nual has no concern but with the spoken language of to-day. It m^.^ be remarked that vowels are not always used consistently, especially the do sound and short i, which are often interchanged even in the same district. One may hear koblle as well as kille, himl as well as hdbml. It is therefore the more important that the beginner should pay attention to the correct pronouuciation of consonants, as well as to the placing of the accent, which we have indicated whenever a word occurs for the first time, and often, later. While, in regard to consonants, we have followed the trans- literation employed in Wright's Arabic Grammar, that of vowels follows no scientific system, but has been carefully adapted to English analogies, in view of its use by those who are not philo- logists, and who wish to study without a teacher. The philologist will have no difficulty in recognising the Arabic original. It has not been thought necessary to give any indication of the very short e or i sound, which is often all that remains, in the dialect, of the full vowel between two consonants, at the beginning of certain words, especially of Form VIII. In all cases when doubt as to the representation of sounds has arisen we have followed the practical method of submitting the question to educated English friends, not Arabic scholars, by the double process of showing the written form we suggest and asking '"how would you pronounce this?" and by pronouncing the word and asking, "how would you write this?" It is imperative that the learner, who wishes to read and write Arabic, should study the language in its own script, but the fact of its being usually written without vowels makes it evident, especially in view of the inadequacy of the Arabic vowels, that the differences between the literary and the vernacular, and the comparison of the two— which for the student is of utmost interest and importance— can be afforded only by careful transliteration into a foreign script. My task of acccumulating grammatical and syntactical vari- ations has been the work of many years and is the fruit of con- - V - tinuous observation. Though it has been my privilege to associate freely with Arabs of all classes in town and country, I should have felt less hope as to the usefulness of the result, without the final assistance of my friend Elias Nasrallah Haddad, teacher of Arabic in the Teachers' Seminary of the Syrisches Waisenhaus, Jerusalem, whose knowledge of the classical language has enabled him to appreciate changes and distinctions which might have es- caped even an Arab whose scholarship was less, while his intimacy with Palestineau and Libanese Arabic, in various dialects, has given him an insight into his own language, practically unattainable by a European however long his residence, or however profound bis observation. The conversations and vocabularies to be found in the Second Part will, it is hoped, be useful to the traveller in his hotel, and also to the large and increasing number of English-speaking resi- dents, mainly clergy, missionaries and teachers, who, obliged to communicate with the people in their vernacular, have often not the leisure to undertake a more profound study of the language. It is suggested that by covering up one column, English or Arabic as the case may be, the conversations may also serve the student for exercise in translation. Care has been taken, so far as the exigences of illustrating rules have allowed, to employ, even in the grammar, such phrases as may conceivably be of use in daily life. The small collection of idioms, stories, rhymes and proverbs is intended for reading-exercise, and will, it is hoped, be in itself of interest to the student, as also the lists of animals and plants belonging to the country. The English-Arabic Vocabulary, which contains, besides others, all the Arabic words which occur in the Grammar, is intended to serve, at the same time, as an index. I and my collaborator have to thank Director Pastor Schneller and the Printing-master of the Syrisches Waisenhaus for under- taking the printing of this work under considerable mechanical difficulty, as well as that of the fact that the young printers know nothing of the English language. We would also thank Mrs. Haddad for the collection of tales and proverbs, and my wife for general help and encouragement, in a task in which there have been many unforseen difficulties. Feast of the Epiphany, 1909 H. H. Spoer. Table of Contents Part First Transliteration, of Consonants § 1 Transliteration of Vowels . 2 Miscellaneous Remarks 3 The Article 4—7 Pronouns. Personal, Suffixed, and Possesive 8 — 17 Demonstrative 18 — 21 Interrogative, 22 — 27 Relative 28—29 Various Pronominal Expressions, etc 30—36 Numerals. Cardinal Numbers 37—38 Numbers 3—10 39 Change of the Numeral in the Counting of Things . 40 Dual of the Noun instead of tnaiu, and Counting in Commercial Transactions 41 Numbers 11 to 19 42 The Noun in Connection with Numbers 43 Cardinal Numbers treated like Adjectives 44 Date 45 Ordinal Numbers 46 Cardinals serving as Ordinals 47—48 Adverbial Phrases of Number and Time 49 Fractions 50—51 Fractions whose Numerator is 2 52 Fractions whose Denominator is above 10 53 Time 54 vir — r Percentage § 55 "Double", "triple" etc 56 "One by one" etc 57—58 Arithmetical Signs 59 Verbs expressing arithmetical Eelations 60 Days of the Week 61 Prepositions. List of regular Prepositions 62 Prepositions with Suffixes 63 ma', 'ind, la/ 64 Prepositions followed by the Article 65 Paradigms of Prepositions with Suffixes 66 Use of bain 67 Present Tense of "to have." . 68 Past Tense of "to have". 69 "To be right — wrong; to owe; ought" 70 "There is" 71 • "To be able, may, can, will" . 71R. Lists of Compound Prepositions 72 — 73 Adjectives formed from Prepositions 74 Adverbs^ Lists of Adverbs 75— 79 "Alone" 80 Adverbial use of baka and ad 81 Negations. Negation of the Verb 82 Negation of the other parts of Speech 83 Negative Expressions 84 "No" in answer to a Question 85 The Negation rair. 86 Interjections and Exlamations. Calling a Person 87-88 Admiration, Surprise and Woe 89 — YIII — Comparative and Superlative Degrees. Comparative. Paradigms § 90 —92 Comparative of Adjectives denoting physical Defects or Colours 93 "The more ... the more" 94 "Than" of Comparison 95 Comparative of Inferiority. 96 Superlative 97—98 Verb General Remarks 99—100 Formation of the Perfect 101 „ Imperfect 102 „ Imperative 103 „ Pres. Participle 104 ,, Past Participle 105 „ Participles, feminine form 106 Plural of Participles 107 Division of the Verb 108—110 The Strong Verb The Regular Strong Verb 117—115 The Doubled Verb 116 Verbs which have a as l^t or 2"'^ Rad 117—120 The Weak Verb Verbs l^t Radical w 121—122 Verbs l^t Radical y 123 Verbs whose 2'^^ Radical is a 124—126 3'^^ Verbs which have a or i as Radical 127 The Doubly Weak Verb Verb having a as l^t and 'S^^^ Radical 128 l^t a Verbs whose Rad.