Chapter 1.3

Notice from the last lesson where we covered the Non-Marfoo Pronouns. Here we have which is made up of a Harf , an Ism , and a مجرور pronoun هِ.

Recall that some verbs can have direct objects, and some require a prepositional phrase. In the first and last of these three sentences, the verbs have a direct object. The sentence in the middle requires a prepositional phrase.

The first new concept in this lesson is from this line. The وَ is a conjunction, and the purpose of a conjunction is to join together two or more words, phrases, or sentences. The conjunction is used to alleviate the need for repeating yourself. Instead of saying, "I ate an apple. I ate a banana," I can combine the two and say, "I ate an apple and a banana." And that is what is going on here. In previous chapters, the author brought two identical sentences together with just a single word difference. Here, it is now combining what would have been two sentences into one.

The Arabic term for conjunction is عَطْف. What's on the right side of the Waw will be called the مَعْطُوْف عَلَيْهِ, which literally means "the one joined upon," and what's on the left side of the Waw will be called the مَعْطُوْف, literally "the one joined/attached."

literally means "for what thing." We translate this as "for what reason" instead in order to make the translation flow a little better.

is مضارع conjugation #7. You will notice that it seems to be missing a letter, and if you hover over the word, you will see that the ماضي is , where the three base letters are و ض ع. It looks like the و dropped in the مضارع form. This is an Advanced Sarf topic, and we will discuss it in detail later.

This sentence introduces our second new concept, and that is the وَاو حَالِيَّة (The Conditional Waw). We have just learned about the conjunction Waw meaning "and," which is used to join two words, phrases, or sentences together and relieve us from repetition. We have also seen the Waw that comes at the beginning of a sentence, which we also translate as "and." But it's not really used like the conjunction Waw we've discussed, as the sentence would be perfectly fine (in English) even if the Waw was not there. It does not remove the need for repetition at all like the Conjunction Waw. This Waw is unique to Arabic and is used to make sentences and paragraphs flow. There is a whole science as to when the Waw should be brought at the beginning of a sentence and when it shouldn't, but that is a very advanced topic.

So how do we know that this وَاو is حَالِيَّة? When the two sentences that are separated by a وَاو are of the same type, then the وَاو will be the normal sentence separator وَاو. So if we have two questions or two sentences that are statements conveying information, then that وَاو will be the standard one we are used to seeing.

If, on the other hand, the two sentences are significantly different, then it will be the وَاو حَالِيَّة. Our example, for instance, starts off with a question: "And for what reason do you place for them food and drink?". The next sentence (our current sentence) is an informative statement. Let's ignore the وَاو, in which case we would have: ((Certainly, these idols, O my father, do not eat nor drink.)). This is an informative sentence coming after our question. Because of their radical difference, we would consider the Waw to be وَاو حَالِيَّة and translate it as "whereas, even though, although, while".

Here we have a قَالَ - فعل, and a إِبْرَاهِيْمُ - فاعل. You would then expect that everything إِبْرَاهِيْمُ said would be the مفعول به. And that is a good assumption. But in this case, we have a special word for this and we call it the مَقُوْلَة(quoted statement). This is because the مفعول به will be in the state of نصب and we would therefore expect it to reflect that نصب state if the مفعول به is a single word or a phrase. However, because we are quoting someone here, we want to quote them verbatim; using the exact words they used, saying it just like they did, word for word, vowel for vowel. Because of this, we will not change the quoted statement and apply any Fathah changes to words in order to reflect the مفعول به.

If I ask Zaid how he is feeling, and he replies خَيْرٌ. I cannot then say, قَالَ زَيْدٌ خَيْرًا, with خَيْرًا receiving a Fathah on the basis of مفعول به. This introduces ambiguity. Did Zayd say خَيْرًا? If so then Zaid was the one that made خَيْرًا Mansoob. Maybe a verb made خَيْرٌ mafool bihi, and the verb was clear to the one he was speaking to me due to context, and was ommitted for brevity. Or was it me making خَيْرًا because I am making it مفعول به for قَالَ? So we do away with this ambiguity by labelling the quoted statement as مَقُوْلَة and quoting the speech verbatim.