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Tutorials and articles © Joumana Medlej |
Water > Taste > An Introduction to Lebanese > Chapter 4: The article
A. Definite article
If there's one thing that won't cause you any headache in Lebanese, it's the article. There's only one definite article, and for indefinition you simply omit it. Simple:
El ktéb: the book
Ktéb: a book
What's a little less obvious is what happens to the pronunciation of el in front of certain words. Anytime el precedes a word that starts with a consonant that's pronounced with the tip of the tongue, the l disappears and the first letter is doubled. For instance, "the shade" is not pronounced el zoll, but ez-zoll. How do we know when we should transform the article this way? Arabic letters have been divided into two groups: lunar letters and solar letters. "Lunar" refers to the word qamar, where the sound Q is l-friendly – we say el qamar. "Solar" refers to the word shams, where the sound sh is incompatible with l, so that we say esh-shams. Under lunar fall the letters that do not affect the article, under solar those who do. Here they are, with examples; if you try them out loud I think your tongue will tell you what feels right and what doesn't.
| Lunar letters | Example | Solar letters | Example |
| b | El-báb (the door) | s | Es-sót (the voice) |
| k | El-kamera (the camera) | sh | Esh-she3r (the poem) |
| m | El-manshaf (the towel) | j | Ej-joww (the atmosphere) |
| gh | El-gharb (the West) | z | Ez-zó' (the taste) |
| kh | El-kharoof (the sheep) | r | Er-roo7 (the soul) |
| 7 | El-7oot (the whale) | l | El-lél (the night) |
| 3 | El-3eyn (the eye) | n | En-noor (the light) |
| w | El-walad (the child) | t | Et-teen (the fig) |
| d | Ed-deyne (the ear) |
Don't be too troubled by the lunar or solar pronunciation of the article. It in no way affects meaning; it just sounds a little foreign when not applied properly.
B. The… of the…
I said that leaving out the article is equivalent to using the "a" article in English. This is true in isolated word, but when we have a clause (the… of the…) there is a different system at work.
We do not have a word like "of" in the possessive sense. Assume you want to say "the child's ball". To start with, I recommend you think of it the other way around, as "the ball of the child"; it will make translation more immediate. We phrase this sentence literally as "ball the child": tábet-el-walad. If it were "the ball of a child" (a child's ball), we would say "ball child": tábet walad.
The thinking behind this is that the ball is defined by the definite noun following it. Since we are already defining the ball as belonging to the child, we don't need to use a definite article on it as well. If we add the article to "ball", thus overdefining it, we turn it into a subject! "The ball the child" would mean "the ball IS the child"; "the ball child" would mean "the ball is a child".
Let's summarize:
CORRECT: tábet-el-walad ("ball the child") = (the) ball (of) the child, the child's ball
CORRECT: tábet walad ("ball child") = (the) ball (of a) child, a child's ball
WRONG: el tábet el walad ("the ball the child") = the ball (is) the child
WRONG: el tábe walad ("the ball child") = the ball (is a) child
Naturally, the last two examples are only wrong in this context. They're exactly what you need to use if you actually want to say "The ball is a child".
The following are considered defined already and do not require an article:
Proper nouns (Mary, John).
Nouns ending in a possessive suffix (my cup, my book), which in Lebanese is attached to the end of the word.
Nouns in the possessive case (as explained above) defined by their owner noun.
Rearrange the following sentences into a Lebanese order:
1. The horse's tail
2. Peter's friend.
3. The mouse is an animal.
4. The glory of summer.
5. My father's book.
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Tutorials and articles © Joumana Medlej |