Lesson 82 – الدَّرْسُ الثَّاني والثَّمانون

The vocative - الـنِّــدَاءُ

Some call styles The asking for help and lamentation – بعض أساليب النداء (الاِسْتِغاثَةُ – النُّدْبَة)

• Asking for help (الاِسْتِغَاثَة):
• We are still in lesson eighty two of our free Arabic language course. This Arabic course with images and audios will help you learn Arabic.
• The asking for help and the lamentation are two Arabic styles which are used with the Arabic vocative particle.
• The style of asking for help is used to call someone who can help in the critical situations. This call is supposed to be from the weak to the powerful using the vocative particle. Therefore the style of asking help consists of three components as follows:

• In the above mentioned example we notice that the style o asking for help consists of three things:
• The vocative particle (يا), and this particle is not allowed to be eliminated.
• The helping, i.e. the one whose help is requested. This also is not allowed to be eliminated. In the example above the help is asked from Allah.
• The helped, i.e. the one for whom the help is requested. This part can be eliminated. In the sentence above the helped is (الضُّعَفاء).
• More examples:

• You may also notice in the above mentioned examples that the helping is always in the genitive case, because it is preceded with a preposition (لَ) signed with fatħah (respectively يا لَخالِدٍ - يالَلأَمِيـرِ - يا لَلأُمِّ - يا لَرَحْمَةِ اللهِ - يا لَلْعُلَماءِ ).
• The helped is also in the genitive case, but it is preced with (لِ) signed with kasrah  (respectively لِلْجَيْشِ – لِلْمَظْلُومِينَ – لِلأَطْفالِ – لِلْعاصِينَ - لِلْجاهِلِينَ).
• The lamentation النُّـدْبَة
• With the lamentation style one can express mourning for a died person by calling him, or to express pain by calling the cause of the pain.
• This is used when crying for someone who died, crying for the great pain of an organ of the body.
• In the style of lamentation, there is one vocative particle which is specific to lamentation (وا), i.e. it is not used for any other call styles.
• The style of lamentation is composed of two principal components:
• 1- The particle (وا).
• 2-The lamented noun (someone or something)
• Consider the following example:

• From the above mentioned example you may notice that the lamented noun is ended with (alif) and (hā’). Both of the alif and hā’ are optional. Therefore the lamented noun can be ended with the alif only (وا أُخْتا), with the alif and the hā’ of silence (وَا أختاهْ), or without any of them (وَا أختُ).
• The hā’ in this structure is called hā’ of silence(هَاءُ السَّكْتِ), i.e. it is pronounced with sukūn when we stop on it, and pronounced with other vowel (here đammah) when connected.
• The lamented person is not allowed to be an indefinite noun; it is not possible to mourn for unknown person, i.e. it is mistaken to say: (وا رَجُلاه - وا طالباه).
• The lamented can be indefinite only when we lament the cause of pain, as in the following examples: