Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now, we're going to talk about how to form الإضافة.
الإضافة is a really really important central construction in Arabic, and it
literally means 'addition,' and 'iDaafas' are formed by two or more nouns that
were placing together in a relationship of possession, or belonging. It can be
helpful to conceptualize الإضافة the way that we sometimes use the word
'of' in English, right? If we say 'the book of the student,' or 'the city of Amherst,'
'the X of the Y.' There is no 'apostrophe s' construction in Arabic to indicate
possession, there is no way that we can say 'the students book,' we need to
sort of restructure it to say 'the book of the student.' And even though the
meaning of the entire phrase is definite, only the last term of the اضافة is
going to indicate its definiteness by 'alif-laam' or a possessive suffix,
usually. So for example, if we want to say 'the book of the student,' 'the student's
book,' we would say we would write:
كتاب الطالب
'the book of the student.' So we have 'alif laam' here, because this is the
final term of the اضافة, even though that book is definite, we're talking about a
specific book, we do not have 'alif laam' here. Or 'the door of the house.'
باب البيت
again no 'alif-laam' here, but we know because we have a couple of nouns
together, right, we don't have an adjective to confuse us. باب البيت
There's a relationship between these two things: first term, first word, doesn't
have an 'alif-laam,' and this one does, so it's likely that they have that
possessive relationship, we're talking about الإضافة. Now remember that
things that are definite with possessive suffix are never going to take 'alif-laam.'
So if I wanted to talk about 'my mother's office,' for example, I would write
مكتب والدتي I have this 'yaa' that indicates that the والدة is my
والدة والدتي, and again 'maktab' has no 'alif
laam,' so I know that I'm speaking about a specific والدة, my waalida, waalidatii,
مكتب والدتي. One final way that nouns can be definite is if they're
proper nouns, right? So if I wanted to talk about the University of New York,
NYU, I would write جامعة نيو يورك. Notice that I haven't put an
'alif-laam' on New York, because there is only one New York. New York is a proper
noun, so I don't need to give it additional definiteness. It's already
definite. Also notice that here, when I say it as a phrase, I say 'jaami'at New
York, whenever we have a noun with a 'taa marbuuTa' in an اضافة we're going to
pronounce that 'taa marbuuTa' as a 'taa,' as a 't' sound, on all the words except the
final word of the اضافة. You've probably also heard phrases like مدينة آمهرست,
مدينة نورثهامتون, we're not substituting letters, right we're going
to write things exactly the same way, we're going to
write it as a 'taa marbuuTa,' but because it is not the last term in اضافة we're 41 00:04:35,660 --> 00:00:00,000 going to pronounce the sound of the 'taa.'