# درس في



## sinan gul

Does درس في make any sense? In a book for beginners it says درس الولد في الكتاب. What on earth does this mean?


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,

I would say the preposition  في  indicates the place where the boy studied, so the word الكتاب would indicate  a place, it would be  الكُتَّابِ not  الكِتَابِ ...

If we meant "the boy studied the book" then I think we'd say  درس الولد الكِتَابَ  with the word الكِتَابَ in the accusative case...


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## zrangoonwala

The sentence doesn't make any sense if the word means "book."


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## cherine

sinan gul said:


> Does درس في make any sense? In a book for beginners it says درس الولد في الكتاب. What on earth does this mean?


Can you give us a complete information, please? What does the book say about this sentence? And does it have vowelization?


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## sinan gul

The book clearly says دَرَسَ الْوَلَدُ فِي الْكِتابِ How could the book possibly be wrong? It's a textbook for beginners.


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## cherine

Texts books sometimes have mistakes, it happens. I just wanted to check. And you didn't give us the rest of the information yet. How does the book translate or explain the sentence? I have an idea, but I'd like to check first what the book says.


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## Ibn Nacer

Salut,


cherine said:


> And you didn't give us the rest of the information yet. How does the book translate or explain the sentence?


C'est bien dommage que @sinan gul ne réponde pas...

J'étais curieux d'avoir la réponse...


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## sinan gul

My textbook has دَرَسَ الْوَلَدُ فِي الْكِتابِ as part of the exercise for one of the lessons. The answer is L'enfant a étudié dans le livre.


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## cherine

Ok, my idea was that درس في الكتاب is another way to say درس الكتاب or قرأ الكتاب He read/studied the book; but this is not a common usage in Modern FuS7a, so it's surprising to find it in a grammar book. But well, it's not incorrect..

And I just remembered now that this usage is found in the Qur'an: أمْ لَكُمْ كِتابٌ فِيهِ تَدْرُسُونَ (surate al-Qalam, verse 37). But it's the only instance of this usage, the other instances don't have the preposition.


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## Ibn Nacer

cherine said:


> And I just remembered now that this usage is found in the Qur'an: أمْ لَكُمْ كِتابٌ فِيهِ تَدْرُسُونَ (surate al-Qalam, verse 37)


Merci pour cet exemple.


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## sinan gul

Ibn Nacer: Is the French translation idiomatic? Maybe the author was a native speaker of French rather than Arabic...


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## Ali Smith

No, it's not. Look at this thread: I studied using the book


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## Ibn Nacer

sinan gul said:


> Ibn Nacer: Is the French translation idiomatic?


No, this is a literal translation that does not have the meaning that Cherine explained :



cherine said:


> Ok, my idea was that درس في الكتاب is another way to say درس الكتاب or قرأ الكتاب He read/studied the book;


In English too, I guess you wouldn't say this "the boy studied *in* the book", right ?



sinan gul said:


> Maybe the author was a native speaker of French rather than Arabic...


Would it not rather be the opposite? It seems that the author knew that  we can say : درس في الكتاب and that its meaning is what Cherine explained ( درس الكتاب or قرأ الكتاب)... Which demonstrates a knowledge of the Arabic language.

On the other hand, perhaps the author did not know that we could not translate it literally because "*il a étudié le livre*" (_he studied the book_) does not have the same meaning as "_*il a étudié dans le livre*_" (_he studied in the book_).


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## Aliph

sinan gul said:


> Ibn Nacer: Is the French translation idiomatic? Maybe the author was a native speaker of French rather than Arabic...


Maybe you give us a screenshot of the cover of the book.


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## sinan gul

Assimil l’Arabe sans peine


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## Aliph

sinan gul said:


> Ibn Nacer: Is the French translation idiomatic?


It isn’t an idiomatic expression in French and sounds a bit strange though it is not incorrect. I found a quote attributed to the French painter Paul Cezanne who apparently said that the Louvre museum in Paris is the *book in which we learn* to read.
The book in which we learn




sinan gul said:


> Assimil l’Arabe sans peine



As for Assimil, I used it to study Arabic (among many other books) it’s a good and handy book, but a bit curious concerning the choice of the texts, the French language sounds old and antiquated. I checked the authors they are both FRENCH!


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## sinan gul

I can't believe the authors didn't get their textbook checked by a native speaker.


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## Finland

While following this discussion, I've been wondering if this might be an example of a phenomenon that has been observed in some Arabic dialects: prepositional progressive. There is an academic research paper on this subject:
*"feš taqra?" What are you reading? Prepositional progressive in Tunisian Arabic*
You can find the pdf on the web.

In short, many verbs that take a direct object can also take the preposition fi, which makes the meaning progressive. Maybe this sentence Sinan Gul found was written by someone whose mother tongue (maybe Tunisian Arabic?) has this phenomenon. It happens pretty frequently that Arab writers transfer some characteristics from their mother tongue to MSA.

Just a thought!


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## cherine

It is a possibility, but please check my post #9, this structure is used in the Qur'an, so I'd say it's more of a Classical Arabic influence, rather than the influence of a dialect.


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## Finland

Oh yes, I had missed your post. Interesting! Thank you.


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## Ali Smith

sinan gul said:


> Assimil l’Arabe sans peine


The same textbook has the following sentence:

ما درس الولدُ في الكتابِ؟

So, it seems درس + في really seemed correct to the author!


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## a random person online

The textbook seems to be flawed.


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