Marhaba!
Right now we're going to talk about
ذو, which is a word in Arabic that we can use in formal contexts to talk about
possession. You probably know a couple of other ways to express possession in Arabic, particles like
لـِ, or عند, that take a pronoun suffix to go along with them.
لي أخ, I have a brother, or ,عنده كتاب He has a book
ذو however, is distinct in a couple of ways Number one, we tend to use it to talk about
specific kinds of possession
in particular, possession of abstract qualities, like talking about someone 'having
experience, or 'having principles,' and the other main
situation where we see it is when we're talking about
permanent or semi-permanent physical characteristics like
'having brown eyes,' or 'having
black hair, things like that. It is very formal. We're unlikely to hear it in
normal
vernacular speech, it's unlikely to be overheard in a conversation.
But it is used in formal contexts so we need to be prepared to grapple with it.
ذو is one of the so-called 'five names,' الأسماء الخمسة in Arabic that take
distinct long vowel endings when they are part of an
إضافة. The difference with ذو, and
we have another video on الاسماء الخمسة that you can go look at if you'd like a refresher on how they work typically,
but ذو is sort of distinctive in that, number one,
we're only ever going to see it as the first part of an إضافة, because it kind of means 'having or possessing,'
'having brown hair,' 'having blue eyes,' 'having great experience,' and
it has separate forms in
masculine and feminine,
dual, and
plural.
This chart may look a little bit intimidating, but a lot of the grammar that you already know is
applicable in this case. If you see
these columns here, we have separate variants of ذو for مرفوع,
منصوب
and مجرور cases.
Now, if you look at the 'waaw,' 'alif,'
and 'yaa' here, you'll notice that they correspond to the short vowel markings that we could expect on the end of a singular noun.
If a
singular noun were in مرفوع, we would expect to see one or two 'Dammas' at the end. If it were in منصوب,
we would expect it see one or two 'fathas,' and if it we're in مجرور, we would expect to see
One or two 'kasras' at the end.
So the 'waaw' is the long vowel sound that corresponds to 'Damma,' the 'alif' is the long vowel sound that corresponds to
'kasra,' short 'a' sound, and the 'yaa'
corresponds to
the short 'i'
'kasra sound.
Same thing here in the feminine versions.
We have a 'Damma, a 'fatha,' and a 'kasra,'
so it's much like the grammar that you already know if you have spent some time learning about
إعراب Arabic case endings.
So, too, when we look at the dual and plural forms,
it may seem a little bit arbitrary,
but remember that ذو in any of these versions is always the first word of an إضافة, so
take the masculine dual version:
it's a bit like we tacked on that ـان
ending that we know from dual, but we would remove the 'nuun' if any word were part of an إضافة,
or the male plural version,
it's almost as though we tacked on
the ـون, and then removed the 'nuun' because of its place at the beginning of an إضافة. Like if we were talking about
'the employees of the company,' in
formal Arabic that إضافة would look like this:
موظّفو الشركة.
Because in an إضافة that 'nuun' that would ordinarily be there
has to disappear.
It's just a rule of formal Arabic. And we have a separate video on that process as well, if you'd like a refresher. Let's
Take a look at some examples if we wanted to say, for example, in formal Arabic
'Do you know the student with long hair?'
Let's make her a woman. 'Do you know the female student with long hair?'
هل تعرف الطالبة...
Now, since طالبة is the object of تعرف, it's going to take a
منصوب case ending. It's going to take a 'fatha.' So I know the طالبة is منصوب, and therefore
'the student having the long hair, I need to go to the feminine منصوب
version of this word, and I wind up with ذاتَ الشعر الطويل
Remember again ذاتَ is technically the first word of an إضافة
So the noun and the adjective describing the noun that follow are going to be
مجرور because they are
non-first words of an إضافة, so we would add a test on on to those words in a fully vocalized sentence.
Another
example:
'We need employees
who have experience.'
We could say in Arabic
نحتاج إلى موظّفين
Now موظّفين is مجرور with 'yaa-nuun,' not 'waaw-nuun,' because it comes after a preposition.
A حرف جرّ, 'illa.' And that means that I'm talking about multiple employees,
in the مجرور, so I need the
masculine, plural, مجرور version of ذو, which is ذَوي
ذوي خبرة.
And
since this is technically an إضافة, an
indefinite إضافة, I
would also need to include a 'kasra' on the second word, but it would take 'tanwiin.' خبرةٍ.
Another example: 'in our house
there are two cats
with green eyes.' 'two cats that have green eyes.'
So in this case, I might in formal Arabic use a fronted predicate, put that prepositional phrase first.
في بيتنا قطتان
Now this is the مبتدأ, the subject of a جملة اسمية, so it's going to be
مفروع, which means I'm going to need to use the مفروع version, and it's going to need to be in
the dual.
So,
feminine, because قطة in the singular is feminine. Notice here, I have two variations since
ذو is a very formal word and
people are likely to pull it out as a way of kind of showing off their eloquence in Arabic,
they might go for one or the other, they might pick the one that seems more obscure, just to show off a little bit. So
we'll go with version number one, ذاتا, but we could go with ذواتا
ذاتا عيون خضراء.
One last thing that you should know about ذو is that in the plural, in
الجمع المذكّر, sometimes this is used as a
synonym for أهل, 'family,' or more specifically
'parents.' So if we wanted to say 'she lives far from her family,' in a very formal register of Arabic, we could say
تسكن, or هي تسكن, if we really wanted to include that pronoun,
بعيداً عن...
and now that would be 'far from.'
Since عن is a حرف جرّ, I need to use the مجرور version.
'Far from her...
family,' ذوي, and then I would add the possessive suffix ها at the very end.
هي تسكن بعيداً عن ذويها.
'She lives far from her parents.'
Once again, ذو is a very formal structure.
You may not need to use it ever at all in your own writings.
Or you could put it there just to demonstrate to the world how very thorough your knowledge of Arabic structures is.
However, you are likely to encounter it in
contexts where someone is writing for eloquence.
And
it is part of what makes us able to demonstrate our
knowledge of the fine points of Arabic grammar if we use it ourselves.