# فانطلق يمطرني وابلا من الكلام...



## dgwp

I'm struggling to understand the following sentence:

فانطلق يمطرني وابلا من الكلام لم أفهمه كما هو المفروض إذا كنت غريبا عن هذه الديار.​ 
So far, I have the following:

"And he showered me with a hail of words and I did not understand him.................I was a stranger in/to this country."


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## elroy

And he showered me with a hail/torrent of words and that I did not properly understand him (more literally,_ that I did not understand as I was supposed to_) as I was a stranger in/to this country.


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## dgwp

Many thanks Elroy. I guess the attached pronoun on the verb _'afham_ refers back to the word _waabilan_ rather than the person who was unleashing the torrent of words?

Do the two words _huwa_ and _al-mafruuD_ in _kamaa huwa al-mafruuD_ both refer to the same thing, i.e. that which was supposed to be understood? Does this _huwa_ refer to the same thing as the attached pronoun above?


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## elroy

dgwp said:


> Many thanks Elroy. I guess the attached pronoun on the verb _'afham_ refers back to the word _waabilan_ rather than the person who was unleashing the torrent of words?


 Yes, it refers to the torrent of words.


> Do the two words _huwa_ and _al-mafruuD_ in _kamaa huwa al-mafruuD_ both refer to the same thing, i.e. that which was supposed to be understood?


 _Huwa_ is impersonal here; like _it_ in English.  A very literal translation would be "as it is expected (deemed proper)."


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## dgwp

Thanks again for your help, Elroy.


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## dgwp

Just one more thing I thought of: if _al-mafruuD_ was replaced by a feminine noun, then I guess the impersonal _huwa_ would become _hiya_?


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## elroy

Well, "as is the custom" would be كما *هي *العادة, but I wouldn't consider that impersonal.

Impersonal constructions of the form "it is [adjective]" are always masculine, as far as I know.


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## suma

dgwp said:


> I'm struggling to understand the following sentence:
> 
> فانطلق يمطرني وابلا من الكلام لم أفهمه كما هو المفروض إذا كنت غريبا عن هذه الديار.​
> So far, I have the following:
> 
> "And he showered me with a hail of words and I did not understand him.................I was a stranger in/to this country."


 
He went on showering me with speech (conversation) that I didn't undersatnd as one would think since I had been away(estranged) from this land.


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## elroy

suma said:


> He went on showering me with speech (conversation) that I didn't undersatnd as one would think since I had been away(estranged) from this land.


 Your translation is unfortunately incorrect, particularly the parts in red.


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## suma

elroy said:


> Your translation is unfortunately incorrect, particularly the parts in red.


 
Hi Elroy,
You care to elaborte?
_inTalaq _means: to be set free, race along, race off, burst forth, take off, move off, go on, proceed, go away, leave.
_al-mafrooD_ means: presumed, supposed
_ghareeb _means: strange, also as in estranged, moved far away from

So I don't see how yousay my version is incorrect.
In your version you said "... as I was supposed to.." which can be said another way, "as one would think".
Unless I misunderstood the overall context, the speaker is saying that although he/she should understand the words (conversation), but because he/she had been away from this country for so long he/she was having difficulty with the language.
If he/she was a stranger in a foreign country it would have said _ghareeban fi _*not* _ghareeban 3an*. *_Also then there would be no need to say _kamaa huwa al-mafrooD._


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## ayed

_inTalaqa_ "he began/started showering me...


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## suma

OK Ayed
he/began , started...
or as I said: he went on showering me... 
A minute difference.
But Elroy's version left this untranslated.


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## ayed

suma said:


> OK Ayed
> he/began , started...
> or as I said: he went on showering me...
> A minute difference.
> But Elroy's version left this untranslated.


 I prefer "started/began"because it gives me the start of showering.As for "went on", I , for one, feel it as though that incident had begun before "showering"


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## elroy

Sorry for not elaborating; I figured my previous posts already indicated why I had problems with your translation.

Ayed has covered انطلق.  To me, there is a significant difference between "he began showering" (start of an action) and "he went on showering" (continuation of an action).  It would be different if it had been "he went on _to shower_" (start of an action after completion, or cessation, of another).  I didn't feel the need to modify that part of the translation as I wanted to focus on the parts dgwp was having a lot of trouble with, and while "he showered" is not as precise as "he began to shower," I didn't feel that it was important enough to comment on.

"As I was supposed to" was only meant as a more literal translation  (emphasis on _more_, because it's not 100% literal) to help dgwp understand the structure.  My translation was "properly," which is not the same as "as one would think" (neither is "as I was supposed to," for that matter).  The idea here is that the person did not understand the words as they were supposed/expected to be understood, i.e. properly.  "As one would think" is different; it would mean that the person did not understand the words *contrary to (someone's) expectations*, but the meaning is that he did not understand them *in a proper manner *(correctly). 

غريب عن is a legitimate way to say "stranger to." "Away/estranged from" would be *متغرب* عن, and in this context you would need to say something like كنت قد تغربت to express that at the time of the event the person *had been*, but no longer was, away.

I don't see how كما هو المفروض contradicts "stranger."  That a stranger to a place (i.e. a foreigner) would have trouble understanding something properly is not exactly a fantastical notion.


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## cherine

I'm sorry Suma, but I do agree with Elroy that some of your choices are not very accurate.



suma said:


> _inTalaq _means: to be set free, race along, race off, burst forth, take off, move off, go on, proceed, go away, leave.


True. But we don't have to translate it literaly. انطلق يفعل شيئاً can simply mean he started doing it, or he did it with a kind of force/strength/speed.... according to context.


> _al-mafrooD_ means: presumed, supposed


True. So why did you use "as one would think"? They're not really synonyms. Are they? At least I didn't understand it this way.


> _ghareeb _means: strange, also as in estranged, moved far away from
> [...]
> 
> Unless I misunderstood the overall context, the speaker is saying that although he/she should understand the words (conversation), but because he/she had been away from this country for so long he/she was having difficulty with the language.
> If he/she was a stranger in a foreign country it would have said _ghareeban fi _*not* _ghareeban 3an*. *_Also then there would be no need to say _kamaa huwa al-mafrooD._


This is another point I can't agree with you.

غريب عن الديار stranger
غريب في الديار stranger or lonely person in a country that's not his.
Expressing having been away from home can be used with the same words, but with a different structure: tagharrabtu 3an ed-diyaar تغربت عن الديار .
No matter how long I stay away from my country, I can't be called ghariiba.


Now, dgwp, I have a question: Are you sure it's إذا كنت and not إذ كنت ? I think it should be "idh" because it's "explaining" why he didn't understand the words, while "idha" has a different meaning, and doesn't sound correct here.


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## elroy

cherine said:


> Now, dgwp, I have a question: Are you sure it's إذا كنت and not إذ كنت ? I think it should be "idh" because it's "explaining" why he didn't understand the words, while "idha" has a different meaning, and doesn't sound correct here.


 Wow, I didn't even notice!  I've been reading it as إذ this whole time.


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## Yurub

it could be اذا also, if the auther was talking to the reader as: if you were a stranger..


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## elroy

But that wouldn't make any sense at all.


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## Yurub

it should. becuase the author him self is not a stranger but he acts like that.


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## elroy

That would be an extremely odd usage of المفروض!  I think it's far more likely to simply be a typo.

By the way, it occurs to me, Suma, that you may have confused المفروض ("expected," "proper") with المفترض ("assumed").


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## Yurub

well, lets say he is not talking to the reader, but he wanted to show the he realy didn't understand the Arbaji: 

فكأني لطمت الرجل على وجهه. فانطلق يمطرني وابلا من الكلام لم أفهمه كما هو المفروض إذا كنت غريبا عن هذه الديار ولكني تبينت من لهجة الرجل وإشاراته أن المعاني جميلة جدا وأن جملتي راقته كما لم يرقه شيء في حياته!


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## elroy

I just read the whole story, and I think it just might be إذا given the context.

The narrator is an Arab guy who is pretending he's a foreigner relying on a small Arabic phrasebook to interact with locals, as a foreigner would.

So when he says لم أفهمه, he doesn't really mean that he didn't understand what was said, but that he pretended that he didn't because he was posing as a foreigner.

So the translation would be "...a torrent of words that I 'didn't understand,' as would be expected if I were a stranger...".

However, إذ is a very convincing possibility as well: "...a torrent of words that I (of course) 'didn't understand,' given that I was a 'stranger.' ". 

Either way, the context has shown that كما هو المفروض refers to what was expected of the guy in the role he was playing.

This is yet another example of the importance of context!


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## suma

OK I hear you all.
The one thing I'll contest is my use of "as one would think" this means "as a person would presume" which is just another way of saying supposed to = al-mafrooD.


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## dgwp

cherine said:


> Now, dgwp, I have a question: Are you sure it's إذا كنت and not إذ كنت ? I think it should be "idh" because it's "explaining" why he didn't understand the words, while "idha" has a different meaning, and doesn't sound correct here.


 
It's certianly printed as إذا in the book, but I suppose it could just be a typo.


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## cherine

Well, seeing from the larger context given by Elroy, that it can be the right word (not a typo), which makes Suma's suggestions also correct.


elroy said:


> This is yet another example of the importance of context!


Amen to that!


			
				Elroy said:
			
		

> I just read the whole story, and I think it just might be إذا given the context.


Where did you find the story?  What story is it?


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## ayed

cherine said:


> Where did you find the story?  What story is it?


 http://www.lahaonline.com/index.php?option=content&sectionid=1&id=11802&task=view


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## cherine

Thank you so much for the link, Ayed. It's a very funny story


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