Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 November 2005 05:07:54
A very interesting, if rather confusing, lesson today. Much revision will be required.
We learnt today about the two letters, ﺍ ﻠ ('L' and 'A'), that make an indefinite noun definite. So far so good.
But we then learnt that for fourteen of the twenty-eight letters of the Arabic alphabet, if they follow ﺍﻠ they 'swallow up' (a good term!) the 'L' sound, and double the length of the letter that did the swallowing! So even though the 'L' is written, it is not vocalised. And the letters must be learnt. Although it has to be said the groupings they give them are very nice; the letters that 'swallow up' the ﻠ are termed 'sun letters' as the Arabic word for sun begins with one of these letters; the letters that voice the ﻠ are termed 'moon letters' as the Arabic word for moon begins with one of those letters that is not 'swallowed up'.
If that wasn't enough fun, we then learnt about something called the 'elidable hamza' (!!!), where the hamza (which carries a vowel sound as a consonant: yes, that's the best I can do!) also disappears, in speech and in writing. As I said, much revision required!
It was a good class though: tiring, but enjoyable; our teacher always ensures the lessons are good fun.
During the class, one of the students told us about the library at Marrickville having a sale of books, with books from 20 cents!, including some Arabic-English childrens' books. One of the books she had was an Arabic-English version of a Spot book! Unfortunately there were no more Spot books to buy when I got there, but I picked up four Arabic-English books: one about a girl called Grace who dresses up and re-enacts various historical events; a book where various children from around the world describe themselves; a book giving the words for various professions; and a book describing various words from things you find at at school to parts of the body to relatives. Good stuff.