msa-ca

59 | From MSA to CA: A Beginner’s guide for transitioning into Colloquial Arabic How to form the past tense Forming the past tense in CA is the same as MSA except that the final voweling is suppressed to be sukon and sometimes there are internal voweling changes: MSA: ُِ كَتَبْت CA: كَتَبْت MSA: ُِ لَعبْت CA: ِْ لَعَبت In the first example, the only changes were at the end of the word in CA. The final letter is unvoweled and pronounced with a sukon. In the second example, two changes took place in the CA. The first is the unvoweled last letter. The second change is the middle letter root of the verb ع . It has a كسرة in MSA, and it changed into فتحة in CA. The verbs شرب and فهم are examples of verb form 1 on the pattern of فَعِلَ in MSA; this pattern vowels changes to a--a or i--i in CA 1 . This means that in MSA verbs like َِ شَرب and ِ مفَه with kasra in the middle will be in CA a--a ( fatha--fathaa) or i--i ( kasra--kasra) on the first and the second 1 Abbas Al-Tonsi and Laila Al-Sawi, An Intensive Course in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, Part 1 (American University in Cairo 1986) 8