Lesson 83 – الدَّرْسُ الثَّالِثُ والثَّمانون

The style of astonishment - أُسْلُوبُ التَّعَجُّبِ

Introduction - مُقَدِّمَةٌ

  • This is lesson eighty three of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
  • In Arabic, astonishment can be expressed by many ways. We generally understand astonishment from the intonation of the spoken sentence, from the Arabic exclamation mark, and also from the use of certain forms specific to astonishment. Let’s see first some examples which are not specific to astonishment:

Way of astonishment

Example

English

Arabic

English

Arabic

What a (masculine)…!

يا لَهُ

Oh, what a beautiful book!

يا لَهُ مِنْ كِتابٍ جَمِيلٍ!

What a (feminine)…!

يا لَها

Oh, what a pretty watch!

يا لَهَا مِنْ ساعَةٍ جَمِيلَةٍ!

Exclamation question

السُّؤال التعجبي

How could you eat all this food?!

كَيْفَ أَكَلْتَ كُلَّ هَذَا الطَّعَامِ؟!

Exclamation question

السُّؤال التعجبي

Oh, did zayd succeed?!

هَلْ نَجَحَ زَيْدٌ ؟!

Intonation

طريقة التَّنْغِيم صوتيا

Oh, glory to Allah (I am surprised)!

سُبْحَانَ الله !

  • In the above mentioned examples the astonishment is understood from the general meaning, the intonation, or from the exclamation mark.
  • On the other hand, there are two Arabic forms specific to astonishment. They are the most two commonly used ways of expressing astonishment. They are two verbal forms (i.e. depending on verbs), and they have two stable patterns that we will cover in this lesson In-Shaa’-Allaah (God willing).
  • Therefore in this lesson we will learn the following topics:
  • The first verbal pattern of astonishment (ما أَفْعَلَ), its components, and its declension in detail with examples.
  • The second verbal pattern of astonishment (أَفْعِلْ بِـ) ), its components, and its declension with examples.
  • The conditions of the verb of astonishment (i.e. we will learn that not all verbs can form the above mentioned patterns to express astonishment.
  • The rules of the verbs which can form the pattern of astonishment.