This post is intended to break away from all the politics and pressures of the day and allow ourselves to immerse a bit into the Alphabet and philosophy.  For those who hail back to the Illuminatus Observor days, perhaps this will be a welcome little entry where there have been so precious few over the years.

S and R and the Verb “To Be”

I have been teaching English in military and academic institutions for nearly a decade, often subtlety incorporating knowledge contained within this body of work into helping students understand how the English language works.  As my clients are Arabic speakers who are generally professionals with limited time to learn, I have sought out ever more efficient means of transmission of knowledge to aid in understanding the mechanics of English and how to apply this basic understanding to more rapidly grasp the language

When we speak about “mechanics” of English, we are generally referring to “grammar”, or the general rules of the language.  One of the basic elements of grammar is verb conjugation and in English, arguably the most important verb is the verb “to be”.  Although this may sound simple, Arabic as a language does not have a present form of the verb “to be”, so even this seemingly most simple of expressions often takes time to grasp and understand.

However, the verb “to be” does exist in the past tense in Arabic and, like English, appears in an irregular conjugated form.  But unlike English, where the design is rather simple and elegant, the complexity of Arabic verb conjugations provides fertile ground to demonstrate the “gated logic” of English.

A rather fun exercise is to work with students and have them break down the Arabic verb “to be” in a class setting.  Since Arabic has 12 different forms of the verb “to be” in the past, one can imagine the time it takes to run through all of them, especially when you create the setting wherein students are  in a position of  “teaching the teacher”.

In this setting, one can begin with the pronoun “I”.  A simply demonstration begins first in the present tense:

“I am tired” = Ana taban

In this example, it is understood that “I am tired”, but what is said is simply in Arabic is, “I tired”.

Such sets the stage.  From here we ask how to say this in the past tense and do not raise or explain at this time the issue of how it actually works in English.

We begin with the pronoun “I”.

Ana kuntu taban.

Simple enough.  We then move to the pronoun “you”.  In this case, Arabic conjugations, much like Spanish, are gender specific.  Hence the pronoun must split into two forms and the verb “to be” equally must split into two forms.

m: Anta kunta taban

f: Anti kunti taban

At this stage of the demonstration, things are relatively simple and there is little confusion.

Since Arabic is gender specific, we already know that additional layers of complexity are required to express such things as “he” and “she”, and indeed it does.  We then learn that:

m: howa kana = he was

f: hiya kanat – she was

Now, Arabic has changed the first vowel from a “u”  as found in the use with the pronoun “you” to an “a” and then requires an addition of the letter “t” at the end of the form to signify feminine.

We then move on the pronoun “it”.

In Arabic, there is no pronoun for “it” and so a little fun can be had about chiding everyone as to where “it” went?  Moving to “we”

Nahnoo kunna

At this stage, the “trap”, as it were, is set, because the purpose to the exercise is to show the “gated logic” of English.

In Arabic, one will need to go through 4 additional forms of “they” plus 2 additional forms of “you”.  After trying to get the class to agree on any two forms of these two (usually they can’t), you simply throw your hands up in the air, start erasing the board, and tell them, “English is far simpler and you only have to know two letters.  S and R!”

And here is how it works!

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