Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now we're going to talk about how to answer ‘why,’ questions in
Arabic, answers that answer the question لماذا؟
and there are a couple of different words that we can use to
answer these questions including بسبب لِـ and لأن each of these
expresses a slightly different idea, and has certain grammatical restrictions
that we're going to explain in detail right now. For purposes of this video
we're focusing pretty much on فصحى on standard Arabic, all of these forms
however, tend to crop up regularly even in colloquial speech. There are some
separate colloquial forms that we'll also discuss in another video, but you
can expect to hear these in the speech of educated native speakers, even when
they're speaking in their own dialects. There's a lot of overlap in terms of
what we encounter, and the grammar in formal Arabic is a little more, demands a
bit more precision from us. In colloquial, we tend to have a little bit
more flexibility, so that's what we'll be focusing on right now. First we have بسبب
which is actually a combination of two words‫:‬ it's the prefix,
the preposition بـ ‘with,’ plus the word for ‘reason’ in Arabic, سبب, so when we say
بسبب we're saying ‪‘‬with the reason of‪,’‬ or maybe a little more colloquial in
English, we could say ‘because of,’ right? So we use بسبب up to answer a question and
provides a reason that is a phrase, right? We're never going to follow بسبب
with a complete sentence. In Arabic you can think of it as an إضافة,
right if you go back and take a look at the video that we did about the إضافة
construction, ‘with the reason of X,’ whatever, so I could say, for example,
if I wanted to say ‘we like the summer because of the beautiful weather,’ right,
نحب الصيف بسبب الجو الجميل. Now, الجو الجميل is a phrase,
right, we have an ‘alif-laam’ here on the noun, and then another ‘alif-laam’ on the
adjective. What I cannot do with بسبب is say بسبب الجو جميل, right?
That doesn't work, it would it would be as awkward in Arabic as if I said in
English ‘we like the summer because of the weather is beautiful,’ right, yeah, it
doesn't quite work, it's a little bit clunky. So we can only use a phrase at
the end. Or if we say ‘I don't like New York because of the crowding,’
لا أحب نيو يورك بسبب الازدحام.
‘because of the crowding,’ ‘because of the crowdedness.’ So think of the ‘of’ in
‘because of,’ right, that's going to be a really useful barometer for you. ‘Can I
say “because of”?’ with the emphasis on the ‘of’? Then I can probably get away with
using بسبب in Arabic. There's even a certain harmony: بسبب, ‘because of,’ they
share a certain rhythm, so allow that to assist you.
Second we have لِـ which means طfor the purpose of,’ or ‘in order to’ do something
What is my goal in doing something? And just as in English, when we
use a construction like that, ‘in order to,’ ‘for the purpose of,’ we're following it
with a verbal idea and in فصحى, in formal Arabic, when we use it in a sentence,
we're going to need to follow it with a verb of some sort, either a conjugated
present tense verb, الفعل المضارع, or a مصدر, right? One of
those verbal noun forms that we've learned about in previous videos. So, for
example, if I want to say ‘we went to the library in order to study,’ ‘for the
purpose of studying,’ ‘to study,’ I have options. I can either say
ذهبنا إلى المكتبة لندرس here I have my لِـ and then I have that
conjugated present tense verb literally saying ‘in order that we study.’
It's conjugated for ‘us’ with that ‘nuun’ right here. ذهبنا إلى المكتبة لندرس,
or what I can do with no change in meaning, instead of saying لندرس,
I can use the مصدر form of that verb for ‘studying,’ which is الدراسة
so now we take that لِـ and append it to الدراسة
like that right or maybe, um, maybe we're going to the library to read, right, so
we could say either لنقرأ for that we should readو or للقراءة
Whether I use لنقرأ or للقراءة, لندرس or للدراسة ‪,‬ the
meaning is identical, right? ‘For the purpose of, in order to.’ Finally we have
‘li’anna,’ and لأنّ allows us to express reasons in the form of a
complete sentenceو rightو with a separate entire clause that explains the
answer to لماذة. So let's go back to the sentence about the beautiful weather,
right, here we have نحب الصيف بسبب الجو الجميل, ‘because of the
beautiful weather,’ a phrase. What if I really want to say ‘because the weather
is beautiful’? I can do that using لأنّ. For example,
let's just do it here: نحب الصيف بسبب الجو الجميل I could
also say لأنّ
الجو جميل Notice that جميل is no longer definite,
right? It's the خبر of this جملة اسمية. and لأنّ is always followed by a
جملة اسمية‪,‬ right so الجو becomes our مبتدأ, and جميل is our خبر.
Now what if we want to use a pronoun, after لأنّ: because he… because it…
then we have to do something a little bit different. You might think that we're
going to use the the regular subject pronoun forms but we don’t, actually. We
use the object pronouns in the suffix form, that we've seen before.
So you might want to pause, take a moment to go back and look at the object
pronouns video if you need a refresher. But basically, we're going to connect
those object pronouns with this ‘nuun’ with a ‘shadda’ over it
So for example if we wanted to say something like ‘she isn't going to school
this week because she is sick, we can say لا تذهب she doesn't go she isn't
going إلى المدرسة هذا الأسبوع لأنّ
and then I'm going to add that object pronoun, لأنّها مريضة right because she is sick.
So I still have an entire جملة اسمية which I need to have after لأنّ
but instead of writing هي as we would in an ordinary one-clause جملة اسمية, I
have this special form of هي, I use ها, the object pronoun attached to لأنّ. Now
let's take one more example; we could say ‘he studies Arabic because he's majoring
in translation,’ so يدرس العربية because he is a major a major
in translation, right, majoring in translation. لأنّه
متخصّص في الترجمة‪.‬ So here again هو‪,‬ right in its object pronoun
form is the مبتدأ of our جملة اسمية, and then all of the rest of our
sentence is our خبر, the information that's being provided. So as you're
looking at these forms and working with them, working on controlling them, try to
bear in mind the kind of grammatical structure that you're going to need
after each one of these particles, and the nuances of meaning that each of them
is going to allow you to express. These are some really powerful forms in
Arabic, because they allow us to express— I mean look at these sentences, they're
pretty long, they allow you to express complicated ideas, to make excuses, to
justify actions, to support your opinions. So devote yourself to being able to
control them and you'll discover that the breadth of your speech can really
expand.