Tom Facchine – Beginning Classical Arabic Lesson 01
AI: Summary ©
The importance of learning Arabic language for a better understanding of the Koran and Sun statement is emphasized, along with the challenges of learning in an adult language. The speakers discuss the use of examples in English to help teach Arabic language, and explain the differences between a synthetic language and a analytic one. They also discuss the use of "rd" in Arabic and English, and explain the rules and concepts used. Finally, they provide examples of words used in Arabic and encourage viewers to record a zoom class.
AI: Summary ©
Bismillah
Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam
will mostly be
awkward watching the Mohammed Allah here for the Salah, it's got this name, Allahu Allah and him that'd be my In fact when I went back I mean that was in an element, your anatomy, today is the first
today is the first class of classical Arabic, beginning classical Arabic
Arabic
is one of the most important things that we can learn if we want to develop our relationship with Allah subhanho wa taala.
That is because classical Arabic is the vessel that a lot shows to contain or communicate the revelation. Just the fact alone that Allah chose to speak
with sound and letters in the Arabic language the Quran
gives
honor and
blessing to the Arabic language.
So our goal in studying the Arabic language is simply to draw closer to
the words of Allah.
There is no comparison between a person who stands in Salah
listening to the Imam recite. And even though that person hasn't memorized that particular Surah, or those particular ayat, they can understand what Allah spoke to them
because of the knowledge of the Arabic language.
On the other hand, who used to say that whoever wants to
develop or build their intellect, the nation study the Arabic language. So we all know, there's many we could talk all night about the reasons for studying Arabic language, this insha Allah is a humble attempt to begin that journey. And it is in fact, a journey. Right? This is not something that's going to be an overnight dramatic change. It's something that we want to slowly step by step, build over time. What are our goals? In studying classical Arabic? What is this course going to teach you? It is not going to teach you
how to speak. It's not going to teach you how to you know, listen to a lesson or a soap opera or anything else like that in Arabic. It is primarily geared towards understanding the Quran, and the Hadith of the Prophet Mohammed Salah always.
When it comes to conversation, when it comes to colloquial, Arabic, those are all things that build off of a knowledge of classical Arabic. But they are not our principal main goal. Our main goal is to understand to understand the Koran even if we can't speak it, even if we can't sit in a lesson
in the prophets, Masjid, or mushiya Haram in Mecca and understand what the Schaefer is saying, we want to be able to pick up the Koran and read it, or listen to it and understand at least the majority of what is being said to us. So without further ado, we're going to get going into the text, what is the text that we're using, we are using the same curriculum that they use in the Islamic University of Medina, where I studied, I finished this curriculum twice, once on my own with some videos much in the same way that you're doing. And then when I went to Medina to study, I
did it a second time. So you will notice if you're familiar with other Arabic curriculum such as audibly, Albania, dAche, or some of the other ones that are out there, you'll notice that there is not
a lot of things here that is going to develop your conversational ability, it's not going to give you common everyday terms.
You know, we sometimes as students in Medina, were even teased by the locals for the things that we didn't know because I could talk all day about legal theory. And you know, how the theory or the compilation of Hadith and all of this, but many people they weren't able to even name all of the fruits at the fruit stand
or the vegetables in the grocery store. And even though somebody who is serious about Arabic, it's upon them, and it's a good thing for them to try to push themselves to learn all of that, all of that. That's not our main goal. Our main goal is to understand and prioritize that which is in the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad.
So we're starting today, if you're in this course, you should be able to read the letters with Teskey. What do I mean is Teskey Teskey is that's had on the casserole sukoon, right, these sort of what they call diacritical markings that help a non native Arabic speaker to read. Eventually, if you persist in your studies, you will not need these diacritical markings any longer. That is a function of the amount of vocabulary, you know, and the rules of grammar that you know. But we're not there yet. So we need to be able to understand the Teskey of the fat tell ADAMA, the castle, the sukoon and everything else.
Don't be surprised. And I'll say this before we actually we actually start in earnest the text.
One of the things that is the most challenging aspect of learning Arabic is that for many people, it's the first language that they are learning as an adult.
Okay, you have to realize that if you're growing up, and you're speaking, even multiple languages, just from what's going on around you, your family, your country.
That is different than learning a language as an adult, as most people who are native English speakers can affirm, if you ask them the rules of their language, they don't know.
They never had to learn the rules of their native language, because they just spoke it automatically. So a lot of people get discouraged when they start learning Arabic, not necessarily just because it's Arabic, but because it's the first language they're learning as an adult, you teach language differently to an adult than you do to a child, for the child, you can just put them in, immerse them, and they will pick it up intuitively. However, when it comes to an adult, if they want a strong grasp of the language, they need to understand grammar. And if you have not studied grammar before, then guess what, you're really learning two languages, you're learning the target
language, and you're learning rim. Okay, so for those of you who have never studied grammar before in English, or your native language, this course was going to teach you ideas about grammar, in addition to what they are in Arabic.
That being said, that's a perfect segue to our first lesson.
So there if there are two broad categories of languages,
the first category of language is called an analytic language.
The second
type of language is called a synthetic language. There's a really important difference between these two types of languages, and understand understanding, understanding these, what they mean is going to help prepare you to understand Arabic. When I was teaching the young folks in the Sunday school, this I gave an example. And it really helps clarify the idea to them. So let's imagine that I say in English, we've got a couple of brothers that are here and personal attendants. So sometimes I'm going to be using them for examples and exercises. So if I say,
Tom, hit the ball.
Okay, that's our sample sentence. Tom hit the ball.
Who is doing the hitting?
Yes, I, Tom, I'm doing the hitting. That's obvious. Good. Who is or what is getting hit
the ball? Okay, that's easy. Now the question to Sheikh Othman. How do we know that Tom is the one that's hitting? And that the ball is the one that's getting hit?
He's looking at me like I'm insane.
Anybody who's watching or joining it in the zoom? How do we know in the English language? What about that sentence tells us mean Haifa Delilah? Right. What tells us that Tom is the one that's doing the action hitting
and that the ball is the one that's getting hit?
maybe these guys don't know.
Placement and the sentence is what the shake family says. Which is exactly sequence, sequence, no order of the words in the sentence. Better known as syntax, right? Like, formally, syntax is the order that words appear in the sentence. Okay? Excellent. So,
in English, if you change the order of those words, you change the meaning entirely.
If I try to flip around the order of the words, it means the opposite of what I just said, If I said, the ball hits Tom,
that means the exact opposite of what I initially said, because I changed the order. Okay? Everybody's with me with that point. That is the definition of an analytic language, a language where meaning is communicated, due to the order of the words in a sentence. All right.
Now, let's get into our other type of language, our synthetic language.
Before we pin down a definition of that, I'll give you let's let's, let's make up the language. Okay, let's make up a language.
It's going to be called Engel Vic.
Okay, now, this language is this made believe language that we have.
We're not going to communicate, who's doing the action who's getting the action, just by the order in the sentence, we're actually going to put something onto the word itself to show whether it's doing the action, or whether it's receiving the action. So in our language angle book,
we're going to add an oo sound to the end of any word
that is doing an action.
And we're going to add an add sound to any word that is receiving or getting an action. So say,
if we have an English, Tom, hit the ball.
In our new language angle back, what is that sentence?
Tamo Yes.
Hit the ball, right, hit the ball. Exactly. Tamu hit the ball. If, if this is how our new language Engel big works, doesn't matter. What order I put the words in the sentence.
What if I said the ball ah, Tom who hit Do you still understand the meaning you still understand the meaning.
That's the definition of an adult, excuse me of a synthetic language. A synthetic language is a language in which the meaning of the words or the meaning of the sentence is being communicated by things on the word, not by the order of the words sentence.
And if everybody understands that concept, Arabic is going to be a whole lot easier. Because Arabic is a synthetic language, not an analytic language like English. You can flip things around, you can dice up sentences, you can mix them in a blender and put them back out in almost almost whatever order you want.
How you determine what's doing what in the sentence is in the word itself,
is actually part of the word. So
with that set, does anyone have any questions up until this point?
You can hit it you can see we have analytic and synthetic
Okay, so let's go to the text.
Lesson one
at dark zoo, a while well,
the first word we have here is harder,
harder.
Harder in English means this.
This
is a type of word that we call a demonstrative pronoun. Oh my Lord, what is that? A demonstrative pronoun is something that takes the place of a noun, right? When you are indicating how close or far away it is, right? And the thing is known. So if I have my cup of tea here, on my mug of tea,
instead of saying
my mug of tea is hot, my mug of tea is blue, my mug of tea has honey in it. Eventually if I keep making sentences like that, you're going to think that I'm not writing the head.
I will start saying either it, which is a pronoun, or this cup of tea, which is indicating something that is known something that is close. And something that stands in as a substitute for
a noun.
So here we have examples of
sentences that start with this demonstrative pronoun. Okay, 123. Before we read those examples, I'm going to tell you something that is absolutely essential to understand in Arabic.
Okay, and that is
that there are two primary types of sentences in the Arabic language. There are two. Okay, I'm going to
show you show off my terrible whiteboard writing here.
Share Screen. Okay. So the first type of sentence
is
one that begins with a noun.
I'm gonna write an English over here, and I'll write it in Arabic later.
Okay.
Wow, that's really sloppy. And the second type of sentence
is a type of sentence that begins with a verb
if you can keep this in your mind, Arabic will be a lot easier for you. Each of these two types of sentences has different rules entirely. They have different parts that make it up.
So it's almost like if Arabic is a house. These are two separate rooms of the house before you get into anything, meaning, what are my going to put on the word to communicate what I mean? I need to know what room I'm in.
How do we call a noun in Arabic? A noun an Arabic is known as an isum.
For the grammatical terms, I am going to use Arabic because some things translate especially in the beginning, but once we get further on, some things do not translate.
So, we have SM
and we have fed
fat iron, lamb
is some unfair
divide out here we have
Joomla Joomla. main sentence Joomla is Mia
and
Joomla fear Li.
There are sentences that begin with nouns and sentences that begin with verbs. Okay. Joomla is MIA Joomla main sentence Joomla is Mia and Joomla fairly?
It is so that is a very good question. There are
rules if anybody's memorized even Jezza these poem in touch we there's rules for how to pronounce the Hamza to the muscle. We'll go into them at a later class. Right now just take my word for it. That is awesome.
So we have two types of sentences Joomla till failure and Joomla to Izmir.
All we're going to talk about now, in this class, and for the first several classes is type number one Joomla two Isthmian
forget about sentences that begin with verbs for the time being, just remember that they exist out there
somewhere in an unknown land that we will come back to one day inshallah.
So back to our text. Why do I bring that up? Because this lesson deals with Joomla Izmir it deals with sentences that begin with nouns
Who would like to read
our first sentence here? We have a volunteer in person. Our first sentence starting from the right, because Arabic starts from the right, so I'm looking at that picture of the nice condo or the house or whatever that is.
Go ahead.
How that beats what, go ahead, read everything.
Oh, there we go. Ha. Bay tune. Ha, Bay turn. Notice what we have here we have had, which we just learned up here, which means this and we have base tune, which as you can tell from the picture means house. Okay. So if you're looking for a little vocab, your first two vocab words are have that and they tune. Beethoven means house harder means this. The next one will be very, very, very easy. Would like to read this.
Very good. How that mess G dune? Ha, this message G doon
is a message. And we're going to talk about the grammar of what's going on here more, just after we get through these examples so that we learn the vocab. Who would like to from everybody who's in the Zoom audience who would like to read the third example here on the left?
I see Dr. Mohsen. You're up.
baboon. Excellent. Very good. Ha, baboon. This is a door. Very, very good. So now we're going to get off of this page for a second. I'm going to talk about what's going on here. Grammatically.
We said that
did you guys have anything else to say?
Sorry, I cut you off.
Okay, so if I have
had the
pardon my
my friends here when it comes to my handwriting, hi there.
They turned.
We're going to learn now how to construct a Joomla ischemia, which we learned is one of the two types of sentences in Arabic. What it means is that it is a sentence that begins with a now okay.
A Joomla is Mia
has two essential parts.
Two essential parts.
The first part
is called ready to hear for you in Arabic, retype it even better. El Hmoob Tada
el mobile Tada
el mobile Tada. What does that mean?
That means simply, we would translate it in English as the subject.
But as I said, I'll give you the translations for the grammatical terms in the beginning. But moving forward, we're just going to be using Arabic terms as you learn them, because some of them translate and some of them do not.
So we have L Muqtada. Which means the subject and I'll cover
Harbor, which means
the predicate
that's all well and good. Sounds very intellectual and fancy. What does that mean? What is the difference between a subject and a predicate? It's simply this. The subject is the thing we're talking about.
And the predicates is what we're saying about it. Okay, so if you want to add a question word to it, the subject answers the question of who?
And the predicate answers the question of what
or what about that who add a note to that means the subject.
What we're talking about, an L hover, is the predicate. What we're saying about it every single
Joomla is meow. Every single sentence that begins
As with a noun has to have these two parts.
There might be other parts that we can add in this or that flourishes. But all of that is extra. Every sentence that begins with a noun, it has to have, essentially these two parts.
Okay? So that means that if we know the formula and look to that, plus a harbor is a full sentence, a complete sentence, that all we have to do is now explore and learn the different types of looked at the different types of subjects that we can put in there. The different types of predicates, the different types of colors that we can have. What we're doing here is we're starting you out with the absolutely most basic type, okay, a word which is a demonstrative pronoun like this, so that we don't even have to think about learning other vocabulary, the name for this the name for that, we're just going to say this. And then is what Batum. Good. Now, you might have realized, or you might
have had a question along the way here. Wait a minute. In English, we say it with three words, this is a house actually forwards. This is a house.
There's only two words here. If we translate it, word for word, literally, what we have here is this house.
Or technically, and I'll explain why in a second this house
what on earth is going on?
That we don't even have is I will explain it to you. And that will probably take up the rest of the time of class inshallah. So the first thing that we have to look at here are remember back to our example of our made up language English book. Okay. We said that meaning was going to be communicated by stuff that we put on to the word itself. Right, Tom, who hits the ball?
Right? That sounds like my family the time that sounds like maybe how my grandpa would have said it.
Okay, the same concept applies here. Don't even worry about how the for now how does an exception and the reason they started you out with how that is so that you don't even have to think about it. Let's look at B tune. Okay, check out what we have on the end here. We have two bombers, bomber 10. This really stands for
two of them. Okay, if you ever see in the Koran or an Arabic abama with this little hook at the end, that actually means to the homeless, but I'll write it out both both of them so that you can see it. They turn. Alright, so the first thing that we notice is that it's done Ma. Okay, it's not that high. It's not Kessler, it's not sukoon it's not anything else. Other than that. So now we're going to take or learn our first rule about the Hubble. Okay? The Hubble has to be
with a llama. Okay, that's the short rule in Arabic we kind of cheat because we tell Little White Lies. We tell you a white lie. That's like a half truth because it's just enough for you to understand the beginning and then I'm going to show you later on all the examples where it well actually that's not true. There's this and that and the other, but for now, for now. Just trust me when I say that Bama cover cover has been okay.
The note that it also has dama but again, using whether we don't see it, we'll talk about that later. Good. The second question you should ask yourself is why did we give it to the homeless? Why didn't we just give it one bummer. Why do we give it a 10 When are you guys understand 10 When it is when you have to how to cats not just one? Two llamas? Two fat tiles. Two casseroles is what we mean by 10 wean okay,
if we put two of them here.
It means
a house
not the house. Okay.
This 10 ween is what we call a llama to Nikita. Oh my Lord, what is that? It means that it is a sign or the proof that it is in definite. Let me actually type it right here. I'll be better.
In definite What do I mean?
mean by indefinite understanding definite and indefinite is a very, very important concept in Arabic and even in English. What it has to do with is whether we know precisely the one that I'm talking about.
Or not. Or if this is just one of many. So if I said this is the house, what it means is that this is the single house that maybe we were looking for. Maybe we were talking about before, right? Oh, this is the house. This is that house that we were talking about? Yeah, the one with the this and then that, if I say, this is a house, or this is a house, then we are simply saying that this one house is one house among many houses. There are other houses other than this house. Okay. And that is where we get what communicates that an Arabic is, like we said, Arabic is a synthetic language, it's not going to use it with word order. It's not always even going to have its own word. Sometimes
we're just going to slap something on to the end of the word to show you that's what it means. Here. That's the 10 wean, having a 10. Wean means a indefinite. So if we're going to translate it, this
question?
A house good. Okay. Now, you might look at me and say, Well, wait a second. Tom, you said that you were going to explain why there is no is you didn't do that. You just explained why where the A is. Okay, well, haha, you know, step by step.
We've explained where the
a is, we can we know that this is a this is indefinite because of the 10. We have that base ton not beta naught, beta naught beta at bay turn.
Where is is? Where did it go?
To answer that question, we need to answer another question. We said that bait is indefinite.
What's have is how the definite or indefinite?
Haba is indefinite. So when I say this, I don't know which one I'm talking about.
We have a second opinion. Tell us a little and that we have a goal? Oh, well, the first opinion is that. And the second opinion is that okay, the second opinion is that ology is the correct and this Mehsana is that have a is definite. We, if I say this, this mug of tea, that means that I'm talking about a specific one, I'm not talking about a class, I'm not talking about any old one, I'm talking about something specific. So where is is in a gym letter is Mia, in a sentence that begins with a noun that is, is implied. Wherever you switch from definite to indefinite.
It's a little bit deep.
It's a little bit deep. Whenever you switch from definite to indefinite in a sentence, it's understood that what you mean in there is the letter or sorry, the word is you're making a statement of being whether they turn, this is a house.
Now, that's all theory. Let's get back to the practice
sharing the screen back to the book. So that goes for all of all of the examples that we learn how the bay turn, this is a house, we can tell it's a because it has a 10 ween on the end. We know that is is there, because the first part is definite and the second part is indefinite. How the mess G doing the this is a mess cheat, mess sheet is indefinite meaning we say a msgid not the masjid because it has a 10 Wien. And we know that that is, is there. Because the first part of the sentence is definite. The second part of the sentence is indefinite. Same thing with Hatha baboon, this is a door
is implied in the switch from definite to indefinite and
I'll teach you the words for that in Arabic next class Insha Allah, it is implied oops.
That
the IS is implied wherever it switches over from being definite to indefinite. And the A.
A door is in the 10 week. Let's take some more examples. Who would like to read out the next?
The next example let's say from people who are
go for it. I heard someone
kita boon. Very good. Excellent how other keytab Oh, and translated as this is a book. Excellent. Next up
who wants to do the next one?
I can't see everybody at the same time.
Dang it. Where are you at
now dang it's Dana fell asleep. Or he's having connectivity issues. Okay.
Yes, ha, color moon.
Allah Moon This is a pen. Excellent. I'm going to keep reading the the remaining examples just because this is going to cut off in exactly one minute. Have that miftah shown how other miftah Hoan This is a key.
Ha, mech tebboune. Other mech tebboune This is a table or a desk.
How they're sorry rune. How they're sorry rune. This is a bed Hala. corsi Yoon, ha, corsi Yun, this is a chair. All of you should memorize all that vocabulary for next class insha Allah and that's where we'll stop for today. Does anybody have any questions?
Yes, I have a question. Yes, sir. If I like to record this zoom class, how do we do that? I have it all recorded. I'll give everybody access to the recordings and it will be on YouTube and shall