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Lessons
1. Hello & Goodbye

2. Counting

3. Meeting people

4. In the hotel

5. In the restaurant

6. Writing Arabic

7. part 2

8. part 3

9. part 4

10. My name is Issam

11. My local coffeeshop

12. Swedish women

13. Alexandria's beaches

14. Fixing cars

15. Islam & Christianity

16. Quit smoking?

17. Mountains of cookies

18. My marriage









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Grammar 5
In the restaurant

Gender

There are only two genders to Arabic, masculine and feminine. The implementation of these two are in most of the cases very simple. You take the masculine form, and add the ending "-a" to it. Then it is a feminine noun. F.ex.:

mudarris (masc.) — mudarrisa (fem.) [teacher]

kitāb (masc.) [book] — kitāba (fem.) [the act of writing]

sā'ih (masc.) — sā'iha (fem.) [tourist]

Of the three examples above, you see that the first and the third are used for a person. The second, however, is simply changing the meaning of the word, through adding the feminine "-a" at the end. This you will see over and over again in Arabic. By adding "-a", new words with new specific meanings are made.
But you should note, when new words are made by adding "-a" at the end, there is a kin between the masculine and the feminine nouns, in respect of their meaning.




By Tore Kjeilen