# ل (fatha/kasra)



## 6aalib

I know ل is a preposition to express ownership

My question is:  I think most of the time it is voweled as 'li' (ل kasra).  But it is 'la' (ل fatha) when used with the possession pronouns hu, hum, ka, kum, na, and it is still 'li' when used with the possessive pronoun ي.

Is that correct?  

Is there a rule to know about when to vowel it with fatha/kasra, or is it 'li' with all other nouns?


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## Hemza

Yes, that's correct . It's "la" for possession (laka, lahu, lana) and "li" when it's followed with a noun: "li nadia" (for nadia) "li hathihi al bint" (for this girl).


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## 6aalib

shukran

So for the sentence:  'I have a shirt'

Is it:    
لي قميص

(Li qamees)

Is that tecnhically correct?  It sounds weird, not sure if it is wrong or just unusual because people also use '3nd'  -->   عندي قميص


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## Hemza

"li qami9" is not correct, "li" can't be used in this way. The correct form is as you said, "عندي قميص" or "لدي قميص" which means the same thing 

"li" means "for", not "I have"


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## jack_1313

ل can be used in this way; it is correct, as are the other options you suggested.


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## Hemza

If you want to say "I have a shirt", I don't think you can say "li qami9". But if you say "al qami9 atha, li", it's correct .


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## إسكندراني

لي قميص is fine! But it's liya, or mispronounced as a long lii


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## 6aalib

is لي always pronounced liya? 

can you explain what did you mean by "mispronounced as long lii" ?    It has a kasra with ي so isnt it already a long lii?


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## إسكندراني

It should be pronounced liya because the ي has a fat7a. But people mispronounce it because, well, it's easier i guess. I don't know what there is to explain there!


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## 6aalib

Oh I did not know that the ي had a fatHa here

So is this a special case where it has a fatHa?  (because usually the possessive ending ي 'my' does not, eg. 'my book' = kitabi)


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## إسكندراني

إلى على ل ب work like this
liya
biya
2ilayya
3alayya


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## Arabic_Police_999

I don't see where is the error in لي قلم
it looks fine to me
but the part where I agree with Hemza is that this way is less flexible, 
and it doesn't totally function as ي
it's extremely odd if not wrong to say قلم من هذا؟  لي قلم  it's better to say قلمي
so ل function very similarly to the English have/has
I have a black pen لي قلم أسود


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## 6aalib

إسكندراني said:


> إلى على ل ب work like this
> liya
> biya
> 2ilayya
> 3alayya



ok, I did not know this.  I knew the attached pronoun ي becomes  ني  when attached to a verb, but this is another thing to remember

SHUKRAN JAZILAN


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## jack_1313

إسكندراني said:


> It should be pronounced liya because the ي has a fat7a. But people mispronounce it because, well, it's easier i guess.


Having never once heard this vocalisation of لي, I checked each of my English grammar references. Here’s what I found:

Wright (_A Grammar of the Arabic Language_) indicates that the vocalisation should be *لِى*.
Karren Ryding (_A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic_) also indicates that the vocalisation should be *lii*.
Wolfdietrich Fischer (_A Grammar of Classical Arabic_) gives the vocalisation as *lī(ya)*, suggesting that both versions may be acceptable without giving any information about where or when we might find one or the other.

Based on the above, it seems fair to say that *lii* is perfectly acceptable – probably even preferable for someone speaking Arabic as a foreign language as it is certainly more common. Do you know of a source that identifies *lii *as a mispronunciation?


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## 6aalib

I searched for a general rule for this and I found this:

The ii ending changes to ya if the word finishes in a long vowel: eg. (muHaamiiya – my attorney).
(Verbs and essentials of grammer, by Wightwick and Gaatar)


That makes sense because if a word already ends with a long 'ii' vowel, then one will not know if a ي possessive ending is also added, unless there is a 'ya' sound

that is probably the same idea why ل and ب would be pronounced as 'liya' and 'biya'

but that does not really explain why إلى على are '2ilayya' and '3alayya'


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## إسكندراني

Even محاميّ has a شدة. I would just learn the few words we agreed on as their own rule.


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## Apollodoros

jack_1313 said:


> Do you know of a source that identifies *lii *as a mispronunciation?



I know that Quran pronunciation and vocalization (tajweed) is regarded almost as a norm for classical/fusha/MSA...

The last aya of surat al-kafirun has: Lakum diinukum wa *liya* diin.


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## إسكندراني

^This kind of thing might change with القراءات


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