Ahlan wa sahlan! Right now we're going to talk about the dual form in Arabic as
it pertains to nouns, especially, in the dual in Arabic we call المثنّى.
Now in Arabic, we have a special form for when we're referring to exactly
two of something: two years, two chairs, two anything. In formal Arabic, MSA, in
فصحى, we actually have dual endings that
can occur on nouns, on adjectives, on verbs, on pronouns, but right now we're
going to focus just on nouns, because that is the place where we encounter the
dual form the vast majority of the time in colloquial speech, in Egyptian,
Levantine dialect for example. So if we want to refer to a couple of something,
exactly two of something in Shaami or Masri, we add the suffix ـَين to
whatever the noun is that we're referring to. So if we have one طالب,
excuse me, one student, we would say طالب, and if we wanted to refer
to exactly two students, we would say
طالبَين.
One girl, بنت, exactly two girls, بنتَين. If we have a 'taa marbuuTa,' for example, if we're
talking about a library مكتبة, something that is feminine with a 'taa marbuuTa,'
then just like with our possessive suffixes, that 'taa marbuuTa' is going to
metamorphose into a 'taa.' so مكتبة واحدة, مكتبتين. Right? And we're going to
hear the sound of that 'taa' as we talk. So a couple of example sentences: if I want to
say 'I read two books,' exactly two books, in the library, I would say
قرأتُ كتابَين في المكتبة. Or if we want to say she teaches at two universities' two'
colleges, we could say تدرِّس في جامعتَين
Like so. Again, this is the colloquial form that we're most likely
to hear in Levantine or Egyptian dialect. In فصحى we have two versions, actually.
We have one if the dual is the subject of a sentence, and another if what we're
referring to is a direct object or indirect object of a verb or preposition.
So just as an example, if we wanted to say for some reason 'they are two
students, who study, who are studying two languages,' I would say
هما طالبان يدرسان لغتَين.
So here we have هما, the dual form of the
pronoun, طالبان, notice that because this is the subject we have the 'alif-nuun'
suffix for the dual, يدرسان, a special conjugation for the dual verb,
and لغتَين, and so we have that 'yaa-nuun' to indicate that those two
languages are the object. You are going to learn how to control these forms as
you develop your ability to write formal Arabic, as you progress in your career as
a learner and speaker of Arabic. And there are other resources out there if
you're interested that can teach you how to control the dual in formal Arabic. For
now, what I want you to take away is that these forms are out there, so if you
encounter them in a text for example or as you're watching the news, perhaps
the Arabic news on TV, these forms are out there and they just
indicate that we're talking about exactly two of something. In colloquial
speech, once again, we really usually encounter the dual form as ـَين in
Masri or Shaami, and usually only tacked onto the end of nouns to refer to 44 00:05:30,140 --> 00:00:00,000 exactly two.