Learning Arabic (speaking)

So I’m sitting in the Arabic class last night... I'm a bit tired so I'm finding it a bit hard to grasp everything that the imam is teaching us about ‘harf tawkeed’ which is words of emphasis/certainty. :S

Eg “InnAllaha qaadiron ‘ala kulli shayyin” - “Verily Allah is all powerful over all things” –

The “inna” in Arabic being the “verily” in English; but let me tell you this ‘verily’ does not describe the emphasis that Arabic does; the difference is that the emphasis in Arabic is much stronger than just ‘verily’, it means absolutely, without a doubt, certainly!!! Basically a very strong emphasis!

So you might be thinking so what’s so hard about that?!

Well nothing… until he goes on and tells us how to use this emphasis with each personal pronoun!! Innee (Certainly I…), Inna-naa (Certainly we …), Inna-ka (Certainly you …) and so on.

Ok Im surviving …

…hang on! the “inna” word of emphasis slightly changes if you want to use it in the middle of a sentence!! It becomes “anna [ah-nna]”.

So I'm telling myself, ok take it slowly, breathe... Arabic is beautiful… you can do it…

LOL there’s one more way to EXTRA emphasize what you want to say =O By using the “inna” previously mentioned and one more word “Li” in the same sentence

So eg. a verse from the Qur’an: “Inna shshirka ladhul-mon ‘adheemon” – The emphasis words being inna and la

And the meaning is “Most certainly (without a doubt), partnership to Allah (considering someone or something to be equal or greater than Allah) is a great wrong doing” - You can’t emphasize it more than that can you?! WRONG!!! In Arabic you can!

And here’s where I’m going, ok one more rule and I’m gonna stop breathing !!

… and the reminder as to why we’re here, learning Arabic, came just at the right time

Imam explained this specific verse, that I just mentioned above in more detail, but this detail made me go WOW!

So let me try and explain each word and hopefully you’ll go at least ¼ of the wow that I went.

“Inna shshirka ladhul-mon ‘adheemon”

Inna – as we already established means Verily/truly/certainly/ without a doubt

Shirk – partnership to Allah SWT

La – is a word of emphasis that is used with inna which gives more emphasis to the noun that follows it

Dhulmon – this word means wrong doing on a huge scale, imam explained it as oppression (absence of right) and if you add a letter ‘t’ (dhul-ma-ton) to the end of this word the meaning becomes “darkness”; so as we can see the word’s pretty harsh. Plus with the 'la' before it it's even harsher

‘Adheem – this word means GREAT/MAGNIFICENT

So basically every single word used in this verse is a word of strong emphasis. “Certainly shirk is most certainly a tremendous wrong”. Shirk btw is one sin that is not forgiven by Allah.

And then another inspiration to keep going with Arabic, that left me in awe of Allah’s Book

Imam explained verse 2 of surah al ‘asr

1. By the token of time,
2. Verily Man is in loss,
3. Except such as have Faith, and do righteous deeds, and (join together) in the mutual enjoining of Truth, and of Patience and Constancy

2. “ Innal insaana lafee khusr” – Verily man is in loss

As we can see the verse uses the word of emphasis ‘inna’ at the beginning and ‘la’ to add extra emphasis. So we most certainly are in a huge loss.

And look how Allah continues so beautifully, with the word ‘except...’ (illa) =)

It’s like Allah swears by time, that we are without a doubt in such huge loss – and this is where you freak out and go omg omg omg … but then He swt says "EXCEPT ..."

What a beautiful class mashAllah!! Alhamdulillah! =)