Egyptian Arabic Nouns الأسماء
Welcome, أهلا وسهلا!
When it comes to nouns, especially human nouns. Such as jobs titles, there are different genders of those nouns (Masculine, feminine and Plural). Because a “teacher” could be either a man or a woman.
A similar example to this in English would be “actor and actress”, this applies to all human nouns in Arabic.
Muhandis/a |
Engineer |
مهندس/مهندسة |
Mudarris/a |
Teacher |
مدرس/مدرسة |
Talib/taliba |
Student |
طالب/طالبة |
Now, let’s make some examples to see how the pronouns and nouns work together:
– I am a teacher (male speaking) / ana Mudarris / أنا مدرس
– I am a teacher (female speaking) / ana Mudarrisa / أنا مدرسة
– You are a teacher (addressing female) / Enty Mudarrisa / إنتي مدرسة
– You are a teacher (addressing male) / Enta Mudarris / أنت مدرس
– You are teachers (addressing plural) / Ento Mudarriseen / انتوا مدرسين
You must be wondering where is “am, is, are” in those sentences. Well in Arabic, verb “to be” isn’t used generally in the present tense. it’s only used in very specific cases.
Based on the examples above, the noun changes its gender depending on the pronoun/person it is describing.
Exercise:
1 – I am an Engineer
2 – You are a student (female)
How would you say those 2 sentences? let me know in the comments.
