# Levantine: we wished you were with us



## WannaBFluent

السلام عليكم
If I came back from a trip and I want to say "we wished you were with us", I would use the expression:
كنا منشتهيك kənna mnəšthiik
But why not just saying:
شتهيناك štaheenaak
"we wished you were with us" is clearly in the past, so why not just using the past.

Is this because it has a 'conditional connotation'?
I know that (well I guess) the use of kaan (perfect) + verb (imperfect with b-) can mean that *it is a possibility that can be made whenever*.

But here it's not really the case... it is too late, the trip is over. Or maybe it's just about the notion of wishing? then it could make sense that you can wish whenever you want.

It is a bit complicated, what do you think? Is it completely wrong to say:
štaheenaak? what would it means then?
شكرا كتير


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## Ramisadeh

اشتهيناك تكون معنا

We wished you were with us

كنا مشتهينك تكون معنا
Not منشتهيك
We were wishing you were with us

The first one is more appropriate to convey the meaning you wanted, the second one however is like recounting what we did on the trip one of them that we were wishing you were with us

مشتهي+ ين + ك
It is " إسم فاعل" which is treated as a noun or an adjective like in this case

اشتهى يشتهي
Literally means to desire to crave, which can also mean to wish

So the literal way to translate
كنا مشتهينك تكون معنا
We were cravers (wishers) of you being with us.
Can it be used to mean we did instead of we were doing that? Yes. The important thing is the deed.

منشتهيك
منشتهي + ك
Is just the first person plural form of the present simple tense of the verb.

And it cannot be used in the sense you were talking about.

You can also say

اتمنينا لو كنت معنا

يا ريت لو كنت معنا

يا ريتك لو كنت معنا


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## Ribas

agreed with Ramisadeh and you can also say 
حبذا لو كنت معنا


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## WannaBFluent

Are you sure you cannot say _kenna mnəšthiik_ because it comes from a serious ressource.
mnəšthiik fromt the verb اشتهى form VIII.
It is Syrian Arabic.


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## Ramisadeh

كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا

Literally means: nous étions en train de souhaiter que tu soyais avec nous (my french isn't that good as you can see) 

But what I want to convey is that if you put a verb in the present tense after كان it means: used to do something, or was in the process of doing something. 

But you know, in colliqual arabic people tend to have a bit of freedom breaking conventions and changing whatever they like, so maybe there are people who would say:

كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا
Instead of the unambiguous 
اشتهيناك تكون معنا
كنا مشتهينك تكون معنا 
So no worries at least you get what they are trying to say.


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## be.010

WannaBFluent said:


> Are you sure you cannot say _kenna mnəšthiik_ because it comes from a serious ressource.
> mnəšthiik fromt the verb اشتهى form VIII.
> It is Syrian Arabic.


The tense of كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا sounds like third conditional to me. As in: We would've wished you had been with us (had the trip been a pleasant one... etc.). I can't think of a context where this doesn't sound at least a little bit odd, IMHO.
E.g. كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا بس كانت مهمة شغل مو رحلة. ما كنت رح تنبسط. (i.e. we didn't actually wish you had been with us, but we would have. Anyway, there are better ways to convey this meaning.)


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## WannaBFluent

Oh, I'm sorry I did not mention the context. Maybe, it is the reason why you feel the _kenna mnəšthiik_ is incomplete because the rest of the meaning could be implied by the context.

In fact _kenna mnəšthiik_ is a response to _kiif kaan@t @l-2ijaaze ?_

كيف كانت الاجازة ؟
ممتازة كنا منشتهيك

How was your vacation ?
Very good, *we wished you were with us *

Does it make sense?


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## be.010

In Syrian? It'd sound odd. Maybe I'd get eventually that the speaker is being nice, but the sentence as is is weird.
As I said earlier the form "كنا منعمل..." usually conveys the meaning of "we would have". It'd make sense in كنا منقلك تعا معنا بس بعرفك ما بتحب هيك رحلات.


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## Ramisadeh

After some research, I guess it is true that a lot of Syrians tend to say كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا in the sense of: we wished you were with us. Don't ask why though Lol.


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## be.010

Ramisadeh said:


> After some research, I guess it is true that a lot of Syrians tend to say كنا منشتهيك تكون معنا in the sense of: we wished you were with us. Don't ask why though Lol.


LOL! What kind of research could change your mind from "cannot be used" to "a lot of Syrians tend to say"?

Here's a little Google search survey:
"اشتهيناك معنا" provides *1,800 *results
"اشتهيناك تكون معنا" provides *5,980 *results
"كنا مشتهينك معنا" provides *14 *results
"كنا منشتهيك معنا" provides *6 *results.

I think this is a fair reflection of the reality of how often each form is used.


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## Ramisadeh

I said a lot, not the lot, a lot means more than three persons but the lot means most people. You cannot deny that a lot of people would say كنا منشتهيك، I'm not condoning it, I'm just stating it is possible.


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## elroy

The lot???  That would not make any sense here!  "The lot" is British English for "the group of people/things."  And "a lot" doesn't mean "more than three people"; it means "many."

Ramisadeh, rather than play semantic games, why don't you argue using evidence.  So far all you've presented is a vague reference to "some research," and at this point I'm far more inclined to trust the intuitions of be.010, a native speaker of Syrian Arabic, than your vague generalizations.  Are you even a native speaker of Syrian Arabic?


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## WannaBFluent

Oh I might know where the problem comes from. The book I use may be outdated, he was printed in 1983.
The thing is that all the audio tapes was voiced by native Syrians, so they had to say out loud _kenna mnəšthiik _so if it did not make sense, they would have noticed it I guess. By the way, this course is from the Defense Language Institute, it is used by the American Army, as the USA have a lot of immigrants (including Syrians), I guess such a mistake would have been notified. Is that possible that it is just "outdated" ?


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## Ramisadeh

I think it is not outdated, as I said there are a lot of Syrians that would use كنا منشتهيك, it is just sloppy, if I were to draw a parallell with English I'd choose the phrase: we was doing something, or even: she think she cute, that sort of solecism.


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## tounsi51

Nobody would say يا ريتك معنا


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## elroy

tounsi51 said:


> Nobody would say يا ريتك معنا


 This is totally natural in Palestinian Arabic, but it means "I/we wish you were here (now)" not "I/we _wished_ you were here."


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