# All dialects: ما maa / مو muu (negation)



## Setwale_Charm

What is the exact difference between these two negation particles? 
 Why is it _maa béddi qahwe_, _maa andi sahn_, maa _fii kersi_ but _haada muu ghali_, _ana muu farhaan_...?


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## MarcB

maa(maa...sh)= negating prefix used with verbs,participles and prepositions. muu (mesh/mush) is a negation particle often used with adj. as in your examples. These expresions are colloquial not MSA.


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## ayed

maa béddi qahwe
I need not/do not need coffee(negation precedes the main verb)

maa andi sahn
I have not got/no a plate(negation right after the main verb" have")

maa fii kersi
There is no any chair (negation precedes the noun" object")

haada muu ghali
This is not expensive(negation followed by the adjective)

ana muu farhaan
I am not happy(negation followed by adjective)


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## elroy

I think "maa" (or "ma...sh" or just "...sh") is used for verbs and "muu" (or "mish") for everything else (in Palestinian Arabic at least).

Marc, you say "maa" can also be used for participles and prepositions. Could you give some examples?  _(If you are referring only to a particular dialect(s), please let us know.)_

A participle is simply a type of adjective: 

My food is not burnt. - Akli *muu/mish* ma7ruu2. 

If you say "My food was not burned" (i.e. "did not get burnt") the participle is no longer an adjective but part of a verb phrase so you would use "maa": "Akli *maa* n7ara2 / *ma*n7ara2*esh*."

Prepositions:

Your book is not with me. - Ktaabak *muu/mish* ma3i.
This is not for you. - Haada *muu/mish* ilak.
His house is not near mine. - Beeto *muu/mish* jamb beeti. 

In Syrian Arabic, "manno" (a combination of "maa" and "inno") can be used instead of "muu/mish" - but not just "maa" as far as I know.

In Palestinian Arabic, the idiom "maa ilak" means "It's none of your business" but that's a "fixed expression" so to speak. As demonstrated above, we normally use "mish" with prepositions ("muu" is used in Jordan.)


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## Setwale_Charm

Shukran to all for the explanations. I shall remember them


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## MarcB

elroy said:


> Marc, you say "maa" can also be used for participles and prepositions. Could you give some examples? [...]
> A participle is simply a type of adjective:
> 
> My food is not burnt. - Akli muu/mish ma7ruu2.



If you say "My food was not burned" (i.e. "did not get burnt") the participle is no longer an adjective but part of a verb phrase so you would use "maa": "Akli maa n7ara2 / man7ara2esh."

Prepositions: maa andi sahn  maa fii kersi.


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## elroy

> If you say "My food was not burned" (i.e. "did not get burnt") the participle is no longer an adjective but part of a verb phrase so you would use "maa": "Akli *maa* n7ara2 / *ma*n7ara2*esh*."


Did you not read my post fully? These constructions do not contain a participle in Arabic but a normal verb. 


> Prepositions: maa andi sahn maa fii kersi


 These structures technically contain prepositions but they are "verb substitutes," if you will. It would have been more precise to say that "maa" is used for verbs and a few other non-verbal constructions that function as "verb substitutes." Simply stating that "maa" is used with prepositions can be misleading.


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## MarcB

Elroy I agree mentioning them or not can be misleading. Anyway that is how it is presented in books.


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## elroy

That's why this forum is so much better than books!


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## Nikola

*[Moderator note: New thread added to the previous one. Cherine]*

Which dialects use the sh for a negation and which do not?
ma...... or ma....sh and mu or mesh.


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## elroy

Negation in Palestinian Arabic:

Present:

baru7esh
mabaru7esh
maa baruu7
Past:

maru7tesh
maa ru7et
Future:

mish ra7 aruu7
maa ra7 aruu7


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## Abu Rashid

The Palestinian dialect is a little more freeform about how you can negate. Egyptian dialect uses just one standard form (as far as I'm aware).

Here's an example using the stem for the verb for "writing"

Past: ma katabt esh
Present: ma baktub esh
Future: mish ha2ktub


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## Tariq_Ibn_zyad

Nikola said:


> Which dialects use the sh for a negation and which do not?
> ma...... or ma....sh and mu or mesh.



As a general rule

Middle-Eastern and Gulfic use maa,muu,maahu..etc never with "sh"
and ma........(except Palestinian,and Jordanian Palestinian)

African Countries(Egypt,Lybia,Tunisa,Algeria,Morocco...)+Palestinian populations(Palestine+Jordan)
mush,mish,mash,mashi,mashshi and ma.......sh


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## MarcB

Nikola, Hassaniyya from Mauritania does not use the sh.


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## Nikola

In some Yemeni dialects ma alone is the neg. in some ma......sh is and some use the sh alone as optional.  I believe Palestine does the same in some dialects,is that correct?


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## Mahaodeh

Yes, I've heard all three from Palestinians, example: ما بَكْتُب - بَكْتُبِش - ما بَكْتُبِش


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## elroy

Mahaodeh said:


> Yes, I've heard all three from Palestinians, example: ما بَكْتُب - بَكْتُبِش - ما بَكْتُبِش


  Correct.  When both are used, the vowel in ما is shortened, so it would actually be pronounced مَبَكتبش.

I should also point out that not all constructions allow all three possibilities.  They all occur in the present tense, but in the past tense, only "maa" and "ma...sh" are possible (so "ru7tesh" doesn't exist), and in the future tense, only "maa" and "mish" occur.


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## Nikola

Thanks Mahaodeh and Elroy


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## kingky

*[Moderator note: New thread added to the previous one. Cherine]
*
I am studying arabic from a textbook while also using pimsleur eastern arabic cds. In the textbook they use 'la' for negation (ex - la arif لا أعرف) but in the cds they use 'mu' or 'ma' and throw in an extra 'b' sound (ex - ma barif - ما بعرف). Where are each of these forms used and is one of them more widely used?


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## tranquity

hello
Actually la is more formal than ma just like
لا أعلم
In daily life, Arabs use ma or mu just like ma baref
"Early to bed makes the person healty,wealthy,and wise"


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## lukebeadgcf

kingky said:


> I am studying arabic from a textbook while also using pimsleur eastern arabic cds. In the textbook they use 'la' for negation (ex - la arif لا أعرف) but in the cds they use 'mu' or 'ma' and throw in an extra 'b' sound (ex - ma barif - ما بعرف). Where are each of these forms used and is one of them more widely used?



The difference is that ما بعرف is colloquial and specifically, Levantine colloquial.


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## Muwahid

The Arabic in your textbook is teaching you Modern Standard Arabic (found frequently in international news in Arabic, newspapers, written works, religious sermons, etc) Your disk as it would appear are teaching colloquial Arabic from the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine). It is one of the major dialects and is well understood everywhere, if you learn MSA Arabic only understanding the average man talk will get very difficult. Pairing your learning with both colloquial and formal MSA is the right way to go in my opinion. 

If you go to a levant country, among friends you will almost always hear them say ما بعرف instead of لا اعرف or even مش/مو عارف.


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## iodalach93

*[Moderator note: New thread added to the previous one. Cherine]*

Mar7aba,

I used to believe that in Lebanese Arabic (or, at least, in its Beiruti variant) tenses were made negative simply by adding ما (past and present) or مِش (future) before the verb. To be clearer:

ana darasit -> ana ma darasit
ana bedros -> ana ma bedros
ana ra7 edros -> ana mish ra7 edros

After listening to a couple of songs by Mashrou' Leila, I noticed that they also use -sh after the conjugated verb to make it negative. I also noticed that future tense beginning with 7a- is also used. I though these two features were typical of Egyptian Arabic, rather than of Lebanese Arabic.

So, my question is: are these two latter features valid for Lebanese Arabic? Or are they, somehow, non-standard?

Shukran ktir li elli fiyon ysa3idouni aw ysa77i7ouni.


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## apricots

I am not sure about the geographic distribution of this feature but ma, ma ...sh, and ...sh can all be used to negate verbs in some Lebanese dialects. This is also true of Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic. Mish is only used to negate verbs in constructions like mish_ebte3raf? Don't you know? And it is used to negate participles like ana mish 3aaraf.

For example: ma ba2der, ba2der(e)sh, and ma ba2der(e)sh all mean I'm not able. Also, when adding the -sh negation it attracts the stress in the same way as -ha, -ni, -hom, and -kom. So we have ma b*a*2der, and +-ma ba2d*e*r(e)sh.

It's also possible that the song was just in Egyptian.


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## analeeh

_-sh_ is used in some Lebanese dialects, but it's not used in my experience in the TV Libnaani of middle-class Beirut. Hamed Sinno does not sound to me like a middle-class Beiruti - I don't know where he's from, but he has a lot of features, like merger of final -e and -i, that suggests he's from somewhere else. Perhaps it's a class thing within Beirut too, I don't know.

Most Levantine dialects, including the Lebanese prestige dialect IME, have two main negators. The primary verbal negator is typically _maa_, which can be coupled with or replaced by _-sh_ in most (all?) southern Levantine dialects and a small number of north Levantine dialects (some Lebanese and also I've heard e.g. people from Suwayda in Syria use it). _Maa-_ can also be used with pronouns, in northern Levantine, to act like a negative copula: _maani joo3aan_ 'I'm not hungry'. 

The other primary negator has a wide variety of different forms, but _mish_ is the one that is used by Beirutis (there's also _mush, muu_, and in some areas _maa_ is also used in this function, though perhaps not in Lebanon). This is mainly used for negating nouns and adjectives, but can also occasionally be used to negate whole sentences. This is different in implication from using _maa _but it's sort of difficult to explain how, other than that it negates the whole idea of the sentence and not just the verb.

As far as _7a-_ is concerned, this is found alongside _ra7-_, _ra7a-_, _la7-_ etc in northern Levantine to mark the future. It may be atypical of Beiruti, but is used alongside all of these in Damascene. I don't know whether there are specific contexts in which one would sound better than the other; it seems to me that they're used in free variation. One of the things you realise over time with Arabic dialects is that a lot of the words which you think are characteristically Egyptian (for example) are also used in other dialects too, just not as much - _3aawiz _for example is used in Levantine, albeit generally for wanting a person (_3aawzak Daruuri_). _7a-_ is another example of this.


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## WannaBFluent

*[Moderator note: New thread added to the previous one. Cherine]
*
السلام عليكم

I wanted to know who, among Levantine dialects, say مش muš, who say مش miš and who say مو muu?

Is the pronunciation difference between miš and muš a regional dialect difference? or people can say both?

I think muu is more Syrian while miš and muš are more Palestinian, is this true?

شكرا


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## analeeh

_mish_ is the most common form in urban Lebanon and Palestine. _mish _and _mush_ are both used in Jordanian, though _mish_ is more common and _mush_ might be a bit more rural/working class, I'm not entirely sure. _muu_ is used in most urban Syrian dialects (I think some also have _mish_) and also in some Bedouin or hicksy dialects elsewhere. Finally, _maa_ is used in place of _muu_ (i.e. to negate nouns and adjectives) by some coastal Syrian speakers. I don't think there's any difference between any of them, although you do get small dialectal or personal differences over whether people say _maa ra7 _or _mish ra7_ (_muu ra7_ sounds wrong to me), _maa laazim_ and _muu laazim_ and so on.


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## WannaBFluent

analeeh said:


> Finally, _maa_ is used in place of _muu_ (i.e. to negate nouns and adjectives)


So it would be:
2ana muu binto (neg. noun)
2ana muu metzawej (neg. adjectives)
maa ba3ref (neg. verb)
Correct?


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## analeeh

Yes. The vast majority of dialects work like this, with two separate negation strategies for verbs and 'pseudoverbs' like _3éndo_ and _béddo_ (_maa_) and everything else (_muu_). But there are some grey areas in the middle where different dialects disagree over what should be used (or allow both), like before preverbal particles (where _maa_ and _mish _are used by different speakers) or 'auxiliaries' like _laazem_ (where _maa _and _mish_ are also used by different speakers/different dialects). Also, all Levantine dialects allow the occasional use of the nominal negator before whole sentences for a more specific purpose, but this is not the normal way of negating verbal sentences.


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## WannaBFluent

Ok, thanks analeeh


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## apricots

You can also use mish with verbs and psuedoverbs to mean don't you ...? Not sure if this works with mu in Syrian though.

mish biddak etruuH? Don't you want to go?


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