Ahlan wa sahlan!
Right now, I want to talk a little bit about regular plurals and the ways that they function
when they are part of an إضافة, specifically if they're part of the إضافة
before the end. There is one little wrinkle in
standard written Arabic about how they perform. This goes for the regular masculine plural,
That we get by adding ـون
In the مرفوع, case or ـين in منصوب and مجرور. As in
teachers: مدرّس, one, مدرّسون or
مدرّسين, etc. And also for the
duals in Arabic,
we can add either ـان
or
ـَين to the end of a word to talk about exactly two of them. So precisely two
teachers would be مدرّسان or مدرّسَين,
depending on the case in formal Arabic. And that's one of those instances where we're going to see
the change in the actual written letters, not just the
إعراب at the end of 'Damma,' or 'fatha,' or 'kasra,' etc.
When we have a
word that is made dual or plural with one or the other of these structures in an إضافة, before the end
or if we have a word
made plural or dual with one of these structures that has a pronoun suffix
Attached to it ('my two books,' 'his two dogs,' etc.), then we need to drop
the 'nuun.'
Again, this is in formal Arabic. In colloquial speech, we're probably just going to
leave the 'nuun' there: كتابَيني. That's appropriate. But in writing, it is considered incorrect.
So, a couple of examples to illustrate the point. If I wanted to say 'I
spoke with the employees of
the company,' I
would say this, or write this:
تكلّمتُ مع...
Now, 'the employees of the company,' we have an إضافة there, and
I have a preposition so 'employees' is going to be مجرور
because of that preposition, so it could be tempting to write
'موظّفين الشركة'
but I need to drop that 'nuun,' so it's going to wind up like this:
موظّفي الشركة
It looks a little silly if you don't know about this rule, but if you encounter that in a text
it's correct, because
this is an إضافة, and
because 'موظّفين', which is what it would be, is
not the last word of the إضافة,
we need to drop that 'nuun.' Let's look at another example.
'The employees of the company said that
they like the director.'
We'll make that a جملة اسمية. We could do it as a جملة فعلية, but let's make it a جملة اسمية.
موظّف
Now,
'the employees of the company,' here
The plural of موظّف is going to be مرفوع. So I'm going to add that 'waaw-nuun' at the end. Or I would...
موظّفون... It's tempting to leave it there, but because I know that I have an إضافة,
and
موظفون
Is the first word, and I've got another one coming I
Just chop off the 'nuun at the end.'
موظّفو الشركة
قالوا إنّهم...
...they said if they like the director.
يحبّون المدير.
Now, we could make this a جملة فعلية, in factو we could argue that it would be more elegant, more 'Arabic' style that way.
In which case, we would put the verb first, and
because the verb comes first, and we haven't mentioned the subject yet it would be singular: قال
موظّفو الشركة...
Etc. Either way, would be fine.
Now, if we wanted to say
that in my interviews in my مقابلات with the
employees of the company,
'Two employees of the company said
that the director is a dope.' They don't like him, they disagree with the rest of these folks, we could phrase it
this way:
Exactly two, and let's assume that they are
Male or a mixed group. Well,
it's مرفوع, so I'm going to go with the 'alif-nuun' ending, موظّفان,
but I want to say that 'two employees of the company,'
so I'm going to get rid of that 'nuun' once more, and say
موظّفا الشركة فالا...
they said, the two of them,
إنّ المدير بليد.
One of many words we could say, that someone is a bit of a,
a blockhead.
موظّفا الشركة قالا إنّ المدير بليد.
So once again, we would have that 'nuun' ordinarily, but we need to drop it
under these circumstances. The other circumstances I mentioned is
when we have a pronoun
suffix on the end of one of these words. So if I want to say 'she spoke with her two friends,'
We would do it this way:
I'm going to start that sentence over here.
تكلّمت مع...
now if I were going to say 'two friends,'
ordinarily,
outside of the context of this sentence,
It would be صديقَين--we're assuming these are grammatically masculine friends. صديقَين.
But I'm adding this ها to the end of it, so
what I need to do is drop that 'nuun,' and it turns into
صديقَيها.
We need to make sure that our eyes don't register this 'yaa' as somehow
the possessive pronoun for أنا, صديقي, my friend, because that would give us a strange double meaning. صديقِيها...
My friend or her friend, who knows?
What we got here is a dual, but with the 'nuun'
sliced off, because we have a pronoun suffix coming at the end.
One little wrinkle to watch out for as we work towards
becoming
fluent and fluid readers and writers of Arabic.