# Levantine Arabic: ملبّستيها



## sela.urdon

Heard it during a listening exercise used in this sentence: شو هاد اللي ملبّستيها اياه؟.
I get the overall meaning of the sentence is "what is this that you made her wear?" but this word really confuses me. I know the word شو هاد اللي ملبّستيها اياه؟ uses the active participle of "labbas" (to make someone wear), but is the active participle ملبّس? And if not, why is the miim added in the front? Also, I know that adding the ها to the end refers to the girl who is being forced to wear the thing and that the ت comes from a taa marboota, but why is the ي added? Lastly, what is the ه referring to in اياه? What in this sentence is masculine that called for this ending?


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## elroy

sela.urdon said:


> is the active participle ملبّس?


 Yes. 


sela.urdon said:


> why is the miim added in the front?


 Because that's the pattern for all Form II verbs. 


sela.urdon said:


> why is the ي added?


 The ي here signals second-person: أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها، إنتِ مْلَبِّسْتيها، هي مْلَبِّسْتْها 



sela.urdon said:


> what is the ه referring to in اياه?


 Nothing.  It's simply part of the word. 


sela.urdon said:


> What in this sentence is masculine that called for this ending?


 اياه is an indivisible entity; it's a masculine third-person direct-object pronoun.  It's used here because it refers to هاد which is masculine.


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## sela.urdon

Thanks @elroy! my question about اياه was because I was assuming it was referring the the baby girl, in which case it would be اياها, correct?


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## elroy

Hypothetically, yes, but it's not possible to wear a little girl.


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## jack_1313

elroy said:


> أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها، إنتِ مْلَبِّسْتيها، هي مْلَبِّسْتْها



I'm confused. We're adding a verb suffix to an active participle? Does this occur often in Levantine Arabic?

Would there be any difference in meaning between شو هاد اللي ملبّستيها اياه؟ and شو هاد اللي لبّستيها اياه؟?


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## elroy

jack_1313 said:


> We're adding a verb suffix to an active participle?


 A verb suffix?  Why are you calling it a verb suffix and what do you mean by that?  Could you explain a little more? 





> Does this occur often in Levantine Arabic?


 I guess I'm more likely to be able to answer that question once I know what you're referring to. 


> Would there be any difference in meaning between شو هاد اللي ملبّستيها اياه؟ and شو هاد اللي لبّستيها اياه؟?


 The classic difference between active verbal participle and past tense.  The first one focuses on the result of the action, on the present moment, rather like the present perfect in English, whereas the latter focuses on the past event.  The latter would not be idiomatic in this context.


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## jack_1313

Keep in mind that while I have a basic knowledge of Jordanian dialect, I'm very weak in it. I apologize if my question is mundane.

In MSA, I would phrase this question as ما هذا الذي لبّستِها إياه؟ (lit. "What is this that you dressed her in?"). So this is my point of reference.

I don't think we would ever use an اسم فاعل for this sentence in MSA, but if we did, we certainly could not attach a تِ to the end of it to indicate that it refers to you (female) in the past tense, just as we could not attach a ي to the start of it (يملبس) to make it refer to a male third person subject in the present tense. Active participles function (mainly) like adjectives or nouns - they do not take verb prefixes and suffixes.

It seems to me like we're trying to take an اسم فاعل and conjugate it like a verb.


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## oopqoo

I think the confusion arises because we Arabic learners would think that to add the ها as a suffix to the feminine active participle it would be:
ملبّسة + ها = ملبّستها

By "conjugating اسم الفاعل as a verb" I think what was meant is that for انتي you'd add a ي at the end like in the present-future tense:
بتلبّس+ي+ها = بتلبّسيها
so it's as though we work by the same token for اسم الفاعل:
ملبّسة+ي+ها = ملبّستيها

I hope I understood this correctly and not adding more confusion. I was also interested to know why it's ملبّستيها.


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## jack_1313

That's essentially what I'm talking about, although I don't think the ت here is the تاء مربوطة. Elroy wrote "أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها" - if the تاء here was تاء مربوطة, this sentence would only be correct if the speaker were female.

What would the equivalent for إنتَ be? إنتَ ... إياه؟


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## elroy

jack_1313 said:


> I don't think we would ever use an اسم فاعل for this sentence in MSA


 Correct.


jack_1313 said:


> but if we did, we certainly could not attach a تِ to the end of it to indicate that it refers to you (female)


 We're not.  The ت is the ة.


jack_1313 said:


> That's essentially what I'm talking about, although I don't think the ت here is the تاء مربوطة. Elroy wrote "أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها" - if the تاء here was تاء مربوطة, this sentence would only be correct if the speaker were female.


 Sorry for the confusion.   I actually meant it as a sentence spoken by a female.  I gave all the feminine singular options by person, to show that only in the 2nd person is a ي added.


jack_1313 said:


> It seems to me like we're trying to take an اسم فاعل and conjugate it like a verb.


 No, but possibly the addition of the ي arose by analogy with the past-tense 2nd person form:

AVP: أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها، إنتِ مْلَبِّسْتيها، هي مْلَبِّسْتْها
Past tense: أنا لَبَّسِتْ، إنتِ لَبَّسْتي، هي لَبَّسَتْ

In the past tense, only the إنتِ form has a ي at the end, so this may be the reason a ي is added to the AVP form.


oopqoo said:


> I think the confusion arises because we Arabic learners would think that to add the ها as a suffix to the feminine active participle it would be:
> ملبّسة + ها = ملبّستها


 It _is _in the 1st and 3rd persons (see above).  Only in the 2nd person do you add a ي.


oopqoo said:


> By "conjugating اسم الفاعل as a verb" I think what was meant is that for انتي you'd add a ي at the end like in the present-future tense:
> بتلبّس+ي+ها = بتلبّسيها
> so it's as though we work by the same token for اسم الفاعل:
> ملبّسة+ي+ها = ملبّستيها


 That's a good point!  That strengthens the hypothesis that the ي in the AVP arose by analogy with conjugated verb forms.  So we can expand the table above as follows:

AVP: أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها، إنتِ مْلَبِّسْتيها، هي مْلَبِّسْتْها
Past tense: أنا لَبَّسِتْ، إنتِ لَبَّسْتي، هي لَبَّسَتْ
Present tense: أنا بَلْبِس، إنتِ بْتِلْبِسي، هي بْتِلْبِس

Again, only the إنتِ form has a ي at the end 



oopqoo said:


> I hope I understood this correctly


 בוודאי 


jack_1313 said:


> What would the equivalent for إنتَ be? إنتَ ... إياه؟


 That one's boring; nothing changes. 

أنا مْلَبِّسْها، إنتَ مْلَبِّسْها، هو مْلَبِّسْها

Nothing changes in the plural either: 

إحنا مْلَبْسينها، إنتو مْلَبْسينها، هِنِّ مْلَبْسينها

(OMG, I hope this doesn't get used as fodder for sexists who claim that when you speak _to_ a woman, you have to change the way you say things! )


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## jack_1313

Thanks for the clarification. So the ت is the تاء مربوطة but the ي probably is 'borrowed' from verb conjugation patterns.

Does this ي get used with all other forms of active participle too? For example, could I say شو شايفتيه (_shuu shaayiftiih_) for "What are you seeing?"? And is it definitely pronounced as a long vowel?


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## elroy

jack_1313 said:


> For example, could I say شو شايفتيه (_shuu shaayiftiih_) for "What are you seeing?"?


 شو شايفة؟ (_šū šāyfe_) - What do you see?
شو اللي شايفتيه؟ (_šu-lli šayiftī_) - What is it that you see?

To confuse things further, some people say شو اللي شايفاه؟ (_šu-lli šayfā_).  

And yes, it's pronounced long.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> To confuse things further, some people say شو اللي شايفاه؟ (_šu-lli šayfā_).


In case anyone's interested this is the way we form this kind of verbs in EA. This is why it's the other way round (i.e. the Levantine structure) that is confusing to me 
We say إيه اللي شايفاه and إيه اللي انتي ملَبِّسَاهولها/ملبساهوله دا


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## elroy

cherine said:


> In case anyone's interested this is the way we form this kind of verbs in EA.


 I was going to mention that.  This is yet another example of Palestinian Arabic exhibiting both Egyptian and Northern Levantine features.  I've only heard شايفاه in the Jerusalem area.  In the Galilee, only شايفتيه is used. 


cherine said:


> This is why it's the other way round (i.e. the Levantine structure) that is confusing to me


 Sorry, I didn't mean the Egyptian structure was confusing.  That was just a tongue-in-cheek remark aimed at Jack. 

Both forms sound normal to me , even though I only use شايفتيه. 


cherine said:


> إيه اللي انتي ملَبِّسَاهولها/ملبساهوله


 Now _that's_ a mouthful.


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## jack_1313

elroy said:


> Sorry, I didn't mean the Egyptian structure was confusing.  That was just a tongue-in-cheek remark aimed at Jack.



Rest assured, to me everything in this thread is confusing.


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## elroy

I don't know if this is going to reduce the confusion or add to it, but here's a conjugation table I put together a while back.


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## cherine

elroy said:


> Sorry, I didn't mean the Egyptian structure was confusing.


Oh, don't worry, I just couldn't resist letting you know how confusing this مفعلّتيه structure sounds to me 


> Now _that's_ a mouthful.


Hahaha I realized it when writing it, but trust me it flows very easily on the tongue 

The reason I find the مفعلتيه form strange is because I don't see a reason to have the ت in the first place. I am of course influenced by the way we form the verb in EA مفعلّة so when we add the other pronouns we just elongate the last vowel, drop the taa2 and add those pronounced مفعّلاه.


elroy said:


> No, but possibly the addition of the ي arose by analogy with the past-tense 2nd person form:
> AVP: أنا مْلَبِّسْتْها، إنتِ مْلَبِّسْتيها، هي مْلَبِّسْتْها



Here we say أنا ملَبِّسها، إنتِ/هيّ ملَبِّساها


> أنا مْلَبِّسْها، إنتَ مْلَبِّسْها، هو مْلَبِّسْها
> 
> Nothing changes in the plural either:
> 
> إحنا مْلَبْسينها، إنتو مْلَبْسينها، هِنِّ مْلَبْسينها



Same here, except for the pronoun hinna, which is homma in EA.


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## jack_1313

elroy said:


> I don't know if this is going to reduce the confusion or add to it, but here's a conjugation table I put together a while back.



The last column there is very helpful. It looks like the inclusion of the ي is an anomaly. The other participle+object combinations are basically what we'd expect.

The other oddity - from my perspective - is that the suffix vowels tend to get extended when the masculine object pronoun is attached rather than having a ه sound added. The sound of the vowel seems to assimilate the (weak) sound of the ه. I'm not sure, but I feel like Jordanians would actually add a ه sound (a _h _with a سكون) instead. So درسنا + هو = درسناه أو درسنَه instead of درسنَ + هو = درسنا. Maybe.


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## oopqoo

From your table, elroy, I can glean that the way you speak is slightly different from how my book taught me. It did say that it's common to put the vowels where you did but it taught me to do the following thing. I think they call it الحركات بتلعب دور. I'm unsure if that's what the expression means but anyway:
When adding any letter (be it an object suffix or a ي or و for the female or plural conj.) to the end of the verb (either يِفعِل or يُفعُل verbs but not يِفعَل) you switch some vowels. You have "ana badros" but for inti it's "inti btudorsi" (instead of "inti btudrosi/btudrusi").
When you add a new syllable (and not merely a letter) like in ها، كو، هن you don't see this happen:
ana báDorbak
ana baDróbku, baDróbhen, baDróbha

You don't have form II verbs in that table but I noticed that you say "ana mlabbéstha" (or mlábbestha?) whereas I feel like people speaking with the vowel play I talked about would say "ana mlabbsétha" and if the object were masculine then "ana mlábbesto" (or mlabbésto?). Without an object it's "ana mlábbse" with the way I was taught.

Should I just switch my logic over to how you speak or is it still correct within the scope of PA to speak like me?


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## analeeh

That's definitely normal PA - I think these changes are more-or-less optional, and occur across Levantine Arabic (in Syrian you get the forms _btidrosi_ and _btidersi_ for example).


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## elroy

cherine said:


> hinna


 It's "hinn*e*."  And we have "humme" too.


jack_1313 said:


> The other oddity - from my perspective - is that the suffix vowels tend to get extended when the masculine object pronoun is attached rather than having a ه sound added.


 I think this is common cross-dialectally. 


jack_1313 said:


> I'm not sure, but I feel like Jordanians would actually add a ه sound (a _h _with a سكون) instead. So درسنا + هو = درسناه أو درسنَه instead of درسنَ + هو = درسنا. Maybe.


 It's درسنا + ه + درسناه (darasna + o = darasnaa) in both Palestinian and Jordanian.  "We studied" is spelled درسنا but the final vowel is pronounced short, as in MSA.


oopqoo said:


> You have "ana badros" but for inti it's "inti btudorsi" (instead of "inti btudrosi/btudrusi").


 Both "btudursi" and "btudrusi" are used.  I don't know if the difference is regional or just a difference from speaker to speaker.  But either way, the metathesis is not required. 


oopqoo said:


> ana báDorbak
> ana baDróbku, baDróbhen, baDróbha


 It's true that for the suffixed forms you can't move the "r," but the unsuffixed form can be either "baDurbak" or "baDrubak."  Again, the metathesis is not required. 


oopqoo said:


> You don't have form II verbs in that table but I noticed that you say "ana mlabbéstha" (or mlábbestha?) whereas I feel like people speaking with the vowel play I talked about would say "ana mlabbsétha" and if the object were masculine then "ana mlábbesto" (or mlabbésto?). Without an object it's "ana mlábbse" with the way I was taught.


 It's "mlabbístha."  "Mlabbsítha" is used but _that_ strikes me as a regional usage.  "Mlabbístha" is more common in my experience.  With the "o" suffix the only option is "mlabbísto" (I've never heard "mlabbsíto.")  And yes, the unsuffixed form is "mlábbse."


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