Today in class we went over how to use “this,” “those,” and “that.” We also went over when to use aliph lam with those as well. I had “learned” this stuff before, but it definitely needed going over again. “This” is used for things that are right here whereas “that” is used for things over there. Of course in Arabic there is the singular, the plural, and the dual. And then there are the genders to worry about… OK, no problem, but there is a catch of course. All nonhuman plurals take on the singular feminine with it comes to their adjectives and their demonstrative pronouns (these, that, those). Errr, OK, I think I have that down. If you are using numbers, you use the dual if there are 2 and you use the plural if there are 3-11 of them. If they are nonhuman, you use the plural word for the noun, but describe them with singular, feminine adjectives. If there are more than 11, you use the singular version of the noun, but continue to use the feminine adjectives (singular) regardless of the gender of the noun. Of course if you are dealing with human plurals (sisters, engineers, students), you use the plural noun and have the adjectives agree with both the gender and the plural as long as there are 3-11 of them. If there are more than that, you use the singular noun but the plural adjective (I think) and the adjective must agree gender-wise…
So if we have a sentence like, “These are the new pens.” It ends up being literally translated as “This pens new.” What doesn’t translate is the singular feminine version of the adjective even though we are dealing with a plural masculine noun. Fun fun. If I were to add the actual numbers, it gets even better. “These are the 7 new pens,” ends up closer to “This the seven pens new.” If I go to a higher number like “These are the 15 new pens,” it ends up like, “This the 15 pen new.” Whoosh, and to think that there is much more complicated stuff than this to get through my head…