# أتمنى أن نكون أصدقاء جيدين



## ihsaan

Hi,
in a letter I got from a girl, she wrote:
أتمنى أن نكون أصدقاء جيدين 

Which as far as I can see, means that "I hope/wish (that) we can be good friends".

But, why isn't صديقات جيدات being used here, when both her and I are females? Am I missing something? I thought the plural form of the masculine singular could only be used when speaking about 1. only males or 2. both males and females.


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## Xence

Hi Ihsaan,

You are perfectly right. صديقات is the grammatically correct word in this case. But I guess your friend is somewhat influenced by the dominant language in the Arabic world which is rather inclined to be masculine.


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## ihsaan

Thank you for clarifying. I am wondering; isn't it strange that someone would write something like this if it is indeed gramatically incorrect (the writer is a native speaker of Arabic and she has graduated from an university in an Arab country)? I'm just surprised because in my country it is not acceptable at all to write gramatically incorrect, unless it is obvious that you are writing slang.


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## clevermizo

ihsaan said:


> Thank you for clarifying. I am wondering; isn't it strange that someone would write something like this if it is indeed gramatically incorrect (the writer is a native speaker of Arabic and she has graduated from an university in an Arab country)? I'm just surprised because in my country it is not acceptable at all to write gramatically incorrect, unless it is obvious that you are writing slang.




The plural أصدقاء may simply be the normal plural in your friend's dialect, which is influencing her writing, as Xence has commented.

Remember the difference between colloquial Arabic and standard Arabic is not like slang vs. non-slang. Colloquial Arabic is someone's native language, and obviously can influence them in great ways, despite the Arabic they have learned in school, the grammar of which is often very different. 

This is also probably the reason for the spelling error we saw in your other thread writing إليك as إليكى.


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## ihsaan

The thing I'm surprised by is that I would think that people at a university level would mostly read books in MSA (and probably English, in some subjects). I understand that the grammar of colloquial Arabic is different, yet I thought that people who had gone through grade 1-12, and then later on to university, would still read and write MSA on such a level that they would be influenced very little by their colloquial dialect? 

I am a beginner in Arabic and I have never lived in an Arab country, so my understanding of this might be clouded by that.


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## clevermizo

ihsaan said:


> ... later on to university, would still read and write MSA on such a level that they would be influenced very little by their colloquial dialect?




Not if their coursework is primarily in English or French, which still occurs in some universities depending on the discipline.


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## linguist786

Would it not be "sadiiqatayn jadiidatayn"?


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## elroy

Ihsaan, you are underestimating the power of colloquial Arabic's influence on MSA.  I think that's partly due to an underestimation of how similar the two are.  It's also important to point out that not all deviances from the prescriptive rules of MSA have the same jarring effect on the Arabic native speaker.   أصدقاء does not bother me in that sentence, prescriptively incorrect though it may be.

Linguist, your question is very interesting.  Yes, in theory it should be صديقتين (but it would be جيدتين and not جديدتين), but that would sound incredibly stilted.  Not only that, but it wouldn't sound very natural.  It would be like saying "I hope we can be two good friends."  If I wanted to appease every prescriptivist, I would probably reword the sentence.

As a last note, Ihsaan, the writing of many, many native speakers of English with a high school or college education leaves much to be desired, so there's a big difference between what is expected and what is delivered.


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## Mr.Slade

linguist786 said:


> Would it not be "sadiiqatayn jadiidatayn"?


 
Yes. أتمنى أن نكون صديقتين جيدتين. Unless there are other friends involved.


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## ihsaan

Thank you all for your clarifications and explanations, and please excuse my ignorance when it comes to this matter. I think maybe I can liken this to the fact that we have two norwegian languages: Bokmål and Nynorsk. People who speak bokmål generally write a lot of mistakes when writing nynorsk, despite the two being quite similar in many ways, yet very different from what many people speak.


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## cherine

ihsaan said:


> Thank you for clarifying. I am wondering; isn't it strange that someone would write something like this if it is indeed gramatically incorrect (the writer is a native speaker of Arabic and she has graduated from an university in an Arab country)? I'm just surprised because in my country it is not acceptable at all to write gramatically incorrect, unless it is obvious that you are writing slang.


You're bringing up a sad topic Ihsaan. I don't want to go into details, because this would be beyond the scope of this forum, so I'll only say this as an explanation of your friends mistakes (apparently she makes a lot of them): the level of education in Egypt is getting worse every year. Having a university degree (or even a PhD) is no longer an indicator of good knowledge of anything beyond the person's field of study (and sometimes not even in that  ).



clevermizo said:


> Remember the difference between colloquial Arabic and standard Arabic is not like slang vs. non-slang. Colloquial Arabic is someone's native language, and obviously can influence them in great ways, despite the Arabic they have learned in school, the grammar of which is often very different.


This is also true. And this is what makes some people write إليكي، معكيِ، قلتي instead of إليكِ، معكِ، قلتِ .

As for the very sentence نكون أصدقاء جيدين , I agree with Elroy that it's apparently a direct translation of the English "to be good friends". In Arabic we don't really say that. It's enough to say: أتمنى أن نُصبح أصدقاء (or, in your case أن نصبح صديقتين ).


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## ihsaan

Ah, thank you Cherine!

Well, if أتمنى أن نُصبح أصدقاء is better to say in Arabic, then that's what I'll put in my note book


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## ayed

What this sentence suggets is that it was said after a difference or "skirmish"since the adjective'good" mentioned.It seems the two have just settled their problem , wishing to be friend again.


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## ihsaan

Actually, the context of this sentence is that she is a new pen pal of mine and she said that she wish that we will be good friends.


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## ayed

Now that you've provided us with this context, we usually use the word"friends" without preceding adjective because the word"friend" connotes positive meaning.
I agree with what our members confirmed.


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## ihsaan

Ok, thank you for clarifying.


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## elroy

Indeed, أصدقاء جيدون isn't really a collocation in Arabic.  If you wanted to convey the idea, you could say اصدقاء حميمون (or صديقات حميمات, as the case may be).

(According to الغني, the plural forms are أحماء (m.) and حمائم (f.), but I have never come across either of those, and a quick Google search indicates that the forms I gave are exponentially more common.)


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## Mahaodeh

cherine said:


> You're bringing up a sad topic Ihsaan. I don't want to go into details, because this would be beyond the scope of this forum, so I'll only say this as an explanation of your friends mistakes (apparently she makes a lot of them): the level of education in Egypt is getting worse every year. Having a university degree (or even a PhD) is no longer an indicator of good knowledge of anything beyond the person's field of study (and sometimes not even in that  ).


 
I totally agree and it makes me sad too .



cherine said:


> As for the very sentence نكون أصدقاء جيدين , I agree with Elroy that it's apparently a direct translation of the English "to be good friends". In Arabic we don't really say that. It's enough to say: أتمنى أن نُصبح أصدقاء (or, in your case أن نصبح صديقتين ).


 
I agree, this is obviously a translation. Even in collequal, though we neglect the dual we do not make mistakes in masculine and femine; I would say صديقات in collequal too.


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