Lesson 2: The Arabic Sentence

One of the hardest parts of figuring out the meanings of songs is breaking apart sentences and understanding what they mean as a whole. Even for an advanced or fluent user of the language this can be a daunting task. One can easily know every word in a sentence and totally get the meaning wrong (as I'm sure I've done 1000 times on this site) or just be left clueless.

Fortunately for anyone who knows English or most other European languages, Arabic sentence order is very similar to English. Although classical Arabic tends to put the verb at the beginning of the sentence, the Arabic of the dialects usually puts subject first, then verb, then the objects, prepositional phrases etc etc.

The Equational Sentence

I'll use the song "Albi Moshtaq" by Wael Kfoury to highlight the equational sentence.

انا قلبي مشتاق وبعدك جمر ونار

Ana albi moshtaa' we-bo3dak jamr wu-naar
My heart is yearning and your absence is embers and fire

Ok so to break down this sentence first look at "ana (I or me)." You might think the subject of the sentence is "I." While it is true that he is talking about himself, in this case he is only drawing attention to himself in saying that his heart is yearning. This happens from time to time in Arabic so just be aware of it. The subject of the sentence is "albi (my heart)" which in this sentence is "moshtaa' (yearning, longing)." So as you can see the equational sentence goes like this

Albi=moshtaa'
My heart=yearning

There is a verb for "to be" in Arabic like in English, but it's not used in the same way and for now just now that the simple present tense needs no verb as such.

The Verbal Sentence

As previously mentioned, the verb usually comes after the subject and before the object in the Arabic sentence, just like in English. I'll use the song "Dablet Bakiir" by Julia Boutros

هالورده دبلت بكير. حلوة بعدا حلوة كتير

Ha-al-warda dablet bakiir. 7elwa ba3da 7elwa kitiir.
This flower has wilted early. She’s still pretty, very pretty.

So in this sentence the subject "ha-al-warda (this flower)" precedes the past tense verb "dablet (she/it wilted)," which is followed by the object, time, place or manner in which the flower wilted, in this case "bakiir (early)." This is how a verbal sentence is normally composed, however, sentences often lack a subject because it is implied by the verb. If we dropped of the subject in this sentence and said:

دبلت بكير

Dablet bakiir.
It/She has wilted early

This sentence is grammatically correct as well, but of course without the context of the rest of the song we wouldn't know what has wilted early.