The
adjectives are words describing things or people (nouns): The
car is fast. The town is small. In Arabic there’s two genders:
masculine and feminine (no neuter, i.e. nothing to describe it).
In Gulf Arabic the noun and the adjective must agree in gender
and number. If you want to say the small town, in Gulf Arabic
you’d say the-town the-small, "il-madiinat
is-saghiira" (Nouns usually precede adjectives.)
Other examples:
7ijra
(pl. 7ujar)
- room il-7ijra il-kebiira – the big/large room il-7ijra is-saghiira – the small room
But,
if you only say "il-7ijra saghiira" - it would mean "The room is small" (a short descriptive
sentence).
Many
adjectives become feminine when we add –a
at the end of the masculine form, e.g.:
il-walad
iT-Taweel – the tall boy (Taweel also means ‘long’.) il-bint iT-Taweela – the tall girl
In
Gulf Arabic, duals (see section G.3.2) and plurals of nouns representing
inanimate objects are considered grammatically plural or feminine
singular, thereby attracting either plural adjectives or feminine
singular adjectives. The best way to learn is by example.
sharikaat
kebiira – big companies 7ujar saghiira – big room
But
you say
ir-rayyaayiil
iz-zayiniin (the good men), not ir-rayyaayiil
iz-zayna because rayyayiil is not un inanimate object.
Nisbas.
There are adjectives and nouns, called nisbas, easily
derived from nouns by appending -i or–iiy (masc.) and -iyya (fem.)
at the end of the noun. You have already encountered some:
ba7rayni – Bahraini (something or someone from Bahrain) kweiti – Kuwaiti (something or someone from Kuwait)
Other
examples:
xaarij
– outside
daaxil
- inside
xaariji – exterior, of the outside
daaxili – interior, of the inside
ii-wizaara il-xaarijiyya – the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (lit. the-Ministry the-Exterior)
malaabis daaxiliyya – underwear (lit. clothes interior)
As
the above examples show, the feminine of nisbas is formed by simply
adding –a to the masculine form. The masculine plural is
formed by adding –yiin, and the feminine
plural, of course, by adding -iyyaat for example:
walad (pl. awlaad) – boy
il-awlaad il-ba7rayniyiin – the Bahraini boys
bint
(banaat) - girl
il-banaat il-ba7rayniyaat- the Bahraini girls
In
Gulf Arabic, duals (see section G.3.2) and plurals of nouns representing
inanimate objects are considered grammatically plural or feminine
singular, thereby attracting either plural adjectives or feminine
singular adjectives. The best way to learn is by example.