Arabic Prepositions حُرُوفُ الْجَرِّ

Prepositions – حُرُوفُ الْجَرِّ

In this lesson we will learn three new prepositions. We have learnt that prepositions are the words used to connect two or more words or sentences (Lesson No.4 section 3) and (Lesson No.6 section 6). These prepositions are:

The preposition عَنْ means “about” or “from” e.g. يَتَحَدَّثُ عَنْ means (to talk about), and بَعِيدٌ عَنْ means (far from)
The preposition مَعَ means “with”, e.g. الْكِتَابُ مَعَ الطَّالِبِ means “the book is with the student”.
The letter بِـ means “at” or “in” e.g., if we say هُوَ بِالْجَامِعَةِ it means “He is at the university” or هِيَ بِالْمَطْبَخِ it means “she is in the kitchen.”

English	Transliteration	Arabic
My house is far from the mosque	Baitī baξīdun ξan al masjidi	بَيْتِي بَعِيدٌ عَنْ الْمَسْجِدِ.
Ahmad is sitting with Khalid	Ahmadu jalisun ma’a Khalidin	أَحْمَدُ جَالِسٌ مَعَ خَالِدٍ.
With me is a friend	Ma’ee sadeequn	مَعِي صَدِيقٌ.
Khalid is talking about himself	khâlidun yataħaddathu ξan nafsihi	خَالِدٌ يَتَحَدَّثُ عَنْ نَفْسِهِ.
My friend in Egypt – his name is Ahmed	Ŝadīqī bimiŝra ismuhu aħmadu	صَدِيقِي بِمِصْرَ اسْمُهُ أَحْمَدُ.

It must be remembered that “مَعَ” meaning ‘to have’ should only be used with the things that are separable, e.g. مَعَنَا كِتَابٌ means “we have a book”. It should not be used with relations and parts of the body. So if we want to say ‘He has a nose’, we should say لَهُ أَنْفٌ instead of مَعَهُ أَنْفٌ or لَهَا أُخْتٌ meaning she has a sister, instead of مَعَهَا أُخْتٌ. The preposition مَعَ takes a fatħah on its ending when used with all the pronouns except ي meaning “with me”. When used with ي, it takes a kasrah instead of the fatħah so it will become مَعِي so we say مَعِي كِتَابٌ and not مَعَي كِتابٌ