Hi everyone!
Today we’re going to talk about an underappreciated topic in dialect teaching: the ‘sisters of kaan‘ or ‘framing verbs’. You will be familiar with this class of verbs from fuS7a (ظل, أصبح etc). In Syrian the set is slightly different, but has similar functions.
The main property of all the sisters of kaan is that they can be combined with both verbal and nominal sentences to add a particular nuance (usually a time-related nuance). Since English syntax usually distinguishes between these two functions, most of these verbs will have different translations depending on the kind of sentence they’re combined with. The basic meaning, however, is usually the same. And unlike in fuS7a, you don’t have to worry about case marking.
Let’s now look at the most common sisters of kaan.
Saar
صار Saar ‘become’ is used extensively to express changes of state, much like its fuS7a counterpart أصبح. It is often not directly translated or is translated as ‘start’ or with a time expression, as you can see from the following examples:
الكل صار عم يتجوز
ilkill Saar 3am yitjawwaz
everyone’s getting married [these days]
صايرة محامية
Saayra mu7aamye
she’s become a lawyer
Dall
ضل Dall means ‘stay’ or (with a continuous form) ‘keep Xing’. It also has an idiomatic meaning ‘to [nonetheless] be’:
ضليت عم حاول
Dalleet 3am 7aawel
I kept trying
بضل أخوك
biDall 2akhuuk
he’s still your brother
More often than not, Dall carries an object pronoun suffix referring back to the subject. Counterintuitively, this replaces the suffixes -i and -u:
بتضلكن ساكتين
bitDallkon saaktiin
you (p) keep quiet
ضليتي مبسوط
Dalleetni mabsuuT
I stayed happy
khalli
خلي khalli also means ‘stay’, ‘keep’, and is always combined with this suffixed pronoun. This form is particularly common in the imperative, where the verb itself is generally invariable and the suffix marks the subject:
خليكن هون
khalliikon hoon
stay here (p)
خليك عم تحاول
khalliik 3am it7aawel
keep trying (m)
maa3aad and maaba2a
The forms ما عاد maa 3aad and ما بقى maa ba2a correspond partially to لم يعد lam ya3ud in fuS7a, but they are usually invariable, and do not act like full verbs:
هي ما عاد صغيرة
hiyye maa3aad izghiire
she’s not a kid anymore
أنا ما بقى بدخن
2ana maa ba2a bdakhkhen
I don’t smoke anymore
Note that they can have future and imperative meaning, in which case they translate ‘never… again’:
ما بقى تحكي معو
maa ba2a ti7ki ma3o
don’t talk to him again
ما عاد بعيدها
maa 3aad ib3iidha
I won’t do it [ever] again
rije3
رجع rije3 ‘return’ expresses a change of state, like صار, but with the extra implication that this is a ‘return’ to a previous state. It’s often translatable with ‘go back to’ or ‘be… again’:
رجعت بكتب مقالات
rji3t biktob maqaalaat
I’m writing articles again
I went back to writing articles
برجع ولد صغير
birja3 walad zghiir
I’ll be a kid again
I wrote another post on the various uses of rije3 and radd here.