Categories: linguistics, study
Date: 03 June 2008 12:57:24
An interesting discovery in Arabic class tonight: as well as singular and plural, Arabic has an ending that indicates there are two of something -- ﺃﻦ [aan].
This is rather helpful, because it means singular nouns can easily be turned into dual nouns [e.g. one book becomes two books; one child becomes two children...] by simply adding ﺃﻦ to the end.
Of course, it also means that in Arabic plurals -- as we know them in English -- begin with three of something.
I can sense confusion arising in my poor little brain.