Hi everyone!
In the last post we looked at how to form the active participle (اسم فاعل). Most of the information there will have been fairly familiar to anyone who’s studied fuS7a. Active participles in Syrian look pretty similar to their fuS7a counterparts. But their usage is quite different from what you’ll probably have encountered in modern fuS7a texts.
Basic meanings
Most participle forms are translated with an English verb. Since I’ve already produced a series going into more detail on participle semantics, this will be a fairly brief overview.
For some very common verbs, a participle expresses an ongoing event (‘is X-ing’). The most common categories here are verbs of motion (‘go’, ‘come’ etc) and posture (‘sit’, ‘stand’ etc):
وين رايحة؟
ween raay7a?
where’re you going?
ليش قاعدين؟
leesh 2aa3diin?
why are you sitting down?
With a few verbs, the best English translation will be an adjective. The meaning, however, is the same:
نايمين جوا
naaymiin juwwa
they’re asleep inside
This form is not interchangeable with the 3am form! For more on this, see this post.
This continuous meaning is not available for all verbs. But all participles – at least in theory – can also express a result (i.e. of a past action). Sometimes this corresponds to English ‘have Xed’, and sometimes it carries a connotation of surprise or reportedness:
كاتبة مقالة جديدة
kaatbe maqaale jdiide
she’s written a new article
ليش هيك مساوي؟
leesh heek imsaawi?
why’d you do that?!
Finally, participles can sometimes have future meaning:
مسافرين بكرا
msaafriin bukra
we’re going to be travelling tomorrow
Participles used as nouns
Learning Arabic, you first encounter participles as a kind of agent noun: كاتب ‘author’, مدير ‘director’, طالب ‘student’, etc. In fuS7a, these forms are identical in form to the more ‘verbal’ uses of the participle, with the exception that they often have broken plurals (كتاب, مدراء, طلاب). In Syrian, there are a few nouns of this kind that are also indistinguishable in form from their underlying participle:
|
معلم |
معلم m3allem teacher |
| كاتب kaateb has written |
كاتب |
In most cases, however, a fuS7a form is used for the noun, while the more characteristically Syrian form is used for the participle. It’s good to keep forms like the following separate in your mind:
|
داير |
مدير mudiir director |
| مدرب mdarreb has trained |
مدرب |
Note that the feminine forms also act differently. While adding an object to a feminine participle doesn’t trigger the -et form, adding a word to a feminine noun does:
|
كاتبة مقالة |
كاتبة مقالة |
As in fuS7a, many noun forms also have broken plurals, while their participle counterparts always form the plural with -iin:
|
كاتبين |
كتاب |