Yaa hala! Right now, I want to talk about
negating the imperative in Arabic,
Using what we would call in English the 'prohibitive,' and what we call in Arabic النهي.
I'm assuming in this video that you're familiar with how to construct the imperative in Arabic,
And also that you're familiar with the مجزوم case,
which is sort of
one of the bases on
which we build the imperative. If you need a refresher on either of those, feel free to check out the other videos and come
right back.
Negating the imperative using the نهي in Arabic is fairly simple. What we do is we use the normal
مجزوم conjugation of the verb in question preceded with
لا
So what I'd like to do is compare a couple of sentences first as imperatives--'do this!'--and then as
sentences that include the نهي--'don't do that!' Don't do the same thing.
So if we wanted to say to a single male or grammatically masculine individual
'Speak Arabic!'
we would
use the imperative
of تكلّم
And say
تكلّمْ العربية!
So we've used the مجزوم, chopped off that subject prefix. And we wind up with تكلّم for a masculine singular subject.
Now if we wanted to negate
that verb and say, for example, 'don't speak English!' what we would do is
plus the ordinary version of the مجزوم. We aren't going to use the imperative construction. We're just going to say لا
تتكلّم الانجليزية
So that subject prefix has been returned to the verbو if we're negating it. end of
لا تتكلّم الانجليزية
For example. Or if we wanted to say to a grammatically feminine singular subject, 'go to the party!'
Well, we could take
The verb تذهبي in the مجزوم chop off the 'taa' prefix, and wind up with
اذهبي إلى الحفلة
for example, I'm not going to write that down, but if we wanted to
say the same thing in the negative, we would say
oops, that should be an exclamation point, not a question mark--
لا تذهبي إلى الحفلة.
for example. Or if we wanted to tell a group of individuals 'use your books!'
Instead of, I don't know, your phones or something. We could take that verb
and it would wind up looking like استعملوا
'Use this,' so instead of our
'taa' prefix it's replaced with the alif. But again,
بالنهي باللغة العربية, we would want to say 'don't use the computers or something like that
لا تستعملوا الكمبيوتر
So again, what I want to bring your attention to is that
for the imperative we're using a special form where we lose
the subject prefix,
but
For the نهي we wind up using the plain old regular
مجزوم and notice really that
visually, this does not look any different from a
normal-looking present tense conjugated verb, even though that لا
in the beginning gives it that
Imperative flavor. And if we want to specify that it's that مجزوم and really indicate
That it is the نهي, the negation of the imperative, we might add a 'sukuun' there,
Although we're unlikely to see it in a typical text.
But if you want the sake of clarity to add that sukoon,
it might help your reader a little bit.
And that is how we negate the imperative, that is النهي باللغة العربية.