Hi everyone!

In this post I’ll be providing a brief overview of how passives and causatives work in Syrian. I’ve already covered passives in more detail here. This is intended mainly for completeness as part of my updated fuS7a-to-Shami series. As usual, I’ll be assuming you already know fuS7a.

Passive

In fuS7a any verb can form a passive by changing its internal vowelling. This structure is not normal in Syrian (although you will sometimes hear borrowings from fuS7a, especially in higher-register language). Instead, Syrian relies mainly on a change of pattern to passivise a verb:

Active

Passive

كتب
katab
he wrote
(Form I, fa3al)

انكتب
nkatab
it was written
(Form VII, nfa3al)

درس
darras
he taught
(Form II, fa33al)

 تدرس
tdarras
it was taught
(Form V, tfa33al)
حاكى
7aaka
he spoke to
(Form III, faa3al)

تحاكى
t7aaka
he was spoken to
(Form VI, tfaa3al)

Form I verbs largely correspond to Form VII (sometimes Form VIII, fta3al) verbs, Form II to Form V and Form III to Form VI. Just like in fuS7a, Form V and VI also commonly have other meanings. Sometimes they are used not exactly for passives but for transitive and intransitive pairs.

Verbs that are not Form I, II or III do not generally have passives. This can be difficult to get used to coming from a language where everything can be passivised, but you’ll soon learn how to express yourself without them if you imitate native speakers! We’ll talk about this more later.

Note that the imperfective (مضارع) passive is very common in the meaning ‘cannot’ or ‘should not’:

الشاي ما بينشرب هيك
ishshaay maa byinshireb heek
tea is not to be drunk like that

هادا ما بيتناقش
haada maa byitnaaqash
this guy can’t be argued with

Causative

Causative constructions are formed either using a separate verb (usually on Form II, fa33al) or the auxiliary خلى khalla plus a subjunctive. Note that there is no clear distinction between ‘make’ and ‘let’ in Arabic, unlike in English:

Normal

Causative

فكرو باللي صار
fakkaru bi-lli Saar
they thought about what happened

 خليناهن يفكرو باللي صار
khalleenaahon yfakkru bi-lli Saar
we made them think about what happened
فاتت
faatet
she went in

فوتتها
fawwatitha
I let her in

Although Form II causatives are very common, they are mainly the counterparts of Form I and Form V verbs, and sometimes have additional nuances of meaning beyond simple causatives. For verbs that can’t form their own distinct causative, خلى is the only option.

Note that Form IV (a common causative in fuS7a) and the fuS7a auxiliary جعل are very rare in Syrian.