Marhaba! Right now, we're going to talk a little bit about
nouns and the case endings that they take in formal Arabic after certain numbers.
Ordinarily,
in speech, you wouldn't hear those case endings. In fact,
even in formal contexts, many native speakers of Arabic if they were
speaking on television in front of an audience and using فصحى might revert to
colloquial, because this is a little bit tricky, and a little bit arbitrary.
But it is a way of demonstrating your eloquence in Arabic, so if you are
reading a text aloud, for example, or giving a speech that you're preparing ahead of time in order to impress folks,
it would be appropriate to
dial in the correct إعراب for the nouns that come after these numbers. Numbers in Arabic are a
category with a lot of
precision, in formal Arabic. Right now, I'm only going to focus on the case endings of the nouns at the end.
So there are three major
categories that we kind of have to worry about.
Numbers from three to ten, or larger numbers that end with a quantity from three to ten, like
203, or 1,000,000,009.
After a
number from three to ten, we use the
noun
in its plural,
in the مجرور case.
So, and the number is considered the first term of the إضافة. That's what makes the plural noun that comes after it
مجرور. The number would take whatever إعراب it should take anyway in the sentence. There's one other little wrinkle, that
if we have a masculine noun, a noun that's masculine and singular,
the number is going to look feminine, or vice versa. This is called 'reverse agreement.'
Upon learning that piece of news, you might describe it using other, more colorful language.
It's a little counterintuitive, but it's just the way things are in
Standard Arabic. So let's take a look at a couple of examples. We could say, for example,
'we visited three
cities,' and
we would express that in Arabic like this:
زرنا ثلاثَ مدنٍ.
So مدن here is مجرور
because
'three cities' is considered an إضافة, and because مدن is the plural of
مدينة city in the singular, and
ثلاث is describing cities, it's not going to take the 'taa marbuuTa.' We have reverse
agreement there.
We could say 'we slept in seven hotels.'
نمنا في سبعة ِفنادقٍ.
Here, سبعة is
مجرور because it comes after a preposition
and then فنادق is the second term of our إضافة, and because فندق,
the singular noun for 'hotel' has no 'taa marbuuTa,' سبعة is going to take it.
One last example:
'In my family there are five engineers,' or 'there are five engineers in my family.'
في عائلتي خمسةُ مهندسين.
So here, خمسة is our
مبتدأ, our subject in a nominative sentence a جملة اسمية, so it's مرفوع,
But مهندسين is going to take the مجرور plural, ـين instead of the مرفوع, '-uun,' because this is one long
إضافة, and because مهندس assuming it's a mixed group
we're going to use the masculine
مهندس
Masculine, no 'taa marbuuTa,' so our خمسة is going to take that
'taa marbuuTa.' Reverse agreement once again.
When we're talking about quantities from 11 through
99
We do things a little bit differently. We need to use a singular noun after our number,
And that noun is always going to be in the منصوب case.
with 'fatha tanwiin, usually. So if we said
'they spent
45 days in the city,' we could do it like this:
قضوا
Let me make some room here.
Excuse me. 45 would be خمسة
وأربعين
قضوا خمسة وأربعين يوماً في المدينة.
Here, يوم has to be منصوب because it's coming after a number
that is between 11 and 99. In this case, you might think of
the منصوب being used to answer the question
ماذا, what? So it has that kind of adverbial quality in the منصوب. What is it, what?
45 what?
This
construction in Arabic is called تمييز. You'll be learning more about it in a different video, but for numbers between 11 and
99, that is what we would do.
Another example:
if we want to say 'our class has
30 students,'
or 'in our class there are 30 students,' is how we would
structure it in Arabic, we could say...
I need to make some room up here...
في صفنا ثلاثون طالباً.
Again, because we have a number between 11 and 99, we need to use a singular noun
in the منصوب.
For numbers
ending with 100, مئة
or 1,000,
ألف،
or 1,000,000, مليون, or for that matter also
1,000,000,000, which is مليار
in Arabic,
we need to use a singular noun in مجرور. We can think of it as an إضافة again.
So if we wanted to say, for example,
'I
spent $100,' we could phrase it this way
here:
دفعتُ مئةَ دولارٍ.
Where we have an indefinite إضافة
and the second term means to be مجرور.
مئة
would be منصوب because it would be the object of دفعتُ.
'I spent
a hundred of dollars.'
Essentially is what we're saying.
Or 'Shaharazade
told her stories for a thousand nights.'
It was actually a thousand and one, right? But let's stick with a thousand for the sake of the example.
شهرزاد...
روت شهرزاد حكاياتها لمدة ألف ليلة.
لِـ, we have a preposition, so مدّةِ starts our إضافة, and then we have
ألف ليلة, which would be an إضافة all by itself if it were a phrase:
ألفِ ليلةٍ.
So if it were an إضافة all by itself then ألف could be in
the مرفوع case, it could take any case at all, but because
ليلة is our noun, a thousand nights, and it follows ألف, It's going to be مجرور
once again.
Notice, though, that if we were talking about a less-round number,
because of the way that we list numbers in Arabic, if I said, for example,
'two hundred and fifty dollars,'
then the 'fifty,' since it's the last
number that comes in the order of a larger Arabic number, would take over once again, so if I wanted to say 'I spent
two hundred and fifty dollars,' I could say it this way:
دفعتُ مئتين وخمسين...
خمسين comes last, so I would say
دولاراً.
because of the 'fifty,' it has to be
منصوب.
Notice that
all of the nouns that come after these numbers are indefinite. That tends to be the way it works in Arabic.
Sometimes if we want to talk about a
quantity of something,
like a thousand nights of
stories, or four years of
studying, we need to use a particle to separate the noun and the numbers, so that we don't come up with an
Accidental إضافة that would make
things a little too definite, right? If I said, 'I got my degree after four years of the studying,'
it would... or 'the four years of studying,' if we if we had the numbers in an إضافة,
then it would be saying 'the four years of studying.' Which is little overly specific. So in a case like that,
We would use مِن, probably,
to separate the noun
from the number. So if I wanted to say that, 'I got my degree
after four years of studying,' I could phrase it this way:
حصلتُ على شهادتي بعد أربع سنواتٍ من الدراسة.
If I said
أربع سنواتِ الدراسة
it would mean 'the four years studying,' and unless we had a conversation where that extra specificity made
sense somehow, it would be just as awkward in Arabic where it was in English.
Numbers in formal Arabic can be a bit complicated, and as I said,
sometimes even native speakers in فصحى situations will try to
avoid this complexity, but you, as a brilliant and engaged learner, will want to know this stuff
so that you can demonstrate your mastery and your eloquence when the need arises.