Arabic/XisYandPronouns

X is Y + pronouns

We learned in the previous lesson how to say sentences such as the following in Arabic. The boy is small. The man is big. But what if you want to say where something is. You need a preposition. Take this talk between two people for example: Where is the hammer? It is under the table.

In the second sentence a preposition was used. Whenever you are telling where something is you are using a preposition. Here are some examples of prepositions in English.

under, over, around, through, beside, on, from, inside, behind, etc.

So what if we wanted to say the boy is with the man. We know the following:
ولد (wa-lad) =boy
رجل (ra-jul) =man

Remember we have to prefix "ال" (al) to those words in order to make "the man" and "the boy". But there is one word we haven't covered yet. We haven't covered the preposition "with". That's all we need, there is no need to have a word for "is" in an Arabic sentence. "is" is understood when the first word has "ال" (al) and the second doesn't.
مع (ma-`a) with

Now try to construct the sentence.
Here's how it should look.
الولد مع الرجل

(al_wa-lad—ma-`al-ra-jul)
WordForWord Translation: the-boy with the-man
The boy is with the man.

But what if we wanted to say "The boy is with a man".
الولد مع رجل

(al_wa-lad—ma-`a-ra-jul)
All we had to do was take away "ال" (al) (which means "the") from "رجل" (ra-jul) (which means "a man"). There is no word for "a" in Arabic.

Here are some prepositions we will use:
under = (tiH-ta) تـحت
on top of= (`a-la) على
in= (fii)في
over= (faw-qa) فوق
from= (min) من