# EA: Negation



## makala

Moderator note: This thread is merged from 3 threads about different points related to the negation in Egyptian Arabic. We thought it's more appropriate and practical to have all the discussions gathered in one place. Cherine


If '' I wake up'' is negated ''MABASHAASH'' keeping the 'a' in 'BA', how is ''he doesn't wake up'' pronounced? MABYISHAASH or MABIYISHAASH? With or without the 'i'?


----------



## Noon9

I think MABYISHAASH is more common but both are used if i'm not mistaken.


----------



## makala

Thank you Noon9.


----------



## Josh_

Yes, "ma-byiS·Haa-sh" is more common because a kasra in an unstressed position will often get elided (provided the elision would not make a three consonant cluster) when new syllables are added.


----------



## makala

Thank you Josh.


----------



## Josh_

You're welcome.


----------



## AlJaahil

Hi, all -

Curious about this - e.g. if I want to say in Egyptian Arabic "I don't want to go, should I say _ana mesh 3aawez aruuH_ or _ana ma3awezsh aruuH_?

Secondarily, is "wanting" more generally _aa*w*ez_ or _aa*y*ez_? I seem to see both.


----------



## Abu Rashid

definitely mish 3aawiz.

3aawiz is a noun, and only verbs are negated the other way.


----------



## إسكندراني

AlJaahil said:


> Hi, all -
> 
> Curious about this - e.g. if I want to say in Egyptian Arabic "I don't want to go, should I say _ana mesh 3aawez aruuH_ or _ana ma3awezsh aruuH_?
> 
> Secondarily, is "wanting" more generally _aa*w*ez_ or _aa*y*ez_? I seem to see both.


All four options sound fine to me and largely seem down to personal choice.
مش عاوز اروح
مش عايز اروح
ما عاوزش اروح
ما عايزش اروح - probably the one I'd use myself

The first two I'm not likely to say but are common.
The 'e' in 3aawez & 3aayez is not essential and can be dropped, shortening the aa to a (mosh 3awz aruu7).
The 'ana' is not essential and can be dropped.


----------



## ma7adan

Abu Rashid said:


> definitely mish 3aawiz.
> 
> 3aawiz is a noun, and only verbs are negated the other way.


 
I could have sworn on pain of death that this was true before reading Iskandarani's post. To my ear it sounds absolutely awful and incorrect to say "ma 3aayezsh" because, like Abu Rashid said, nouns (including participles) can only be negated with mesh, not the "ma..-ish" construction. Has this changed in colloquial Egyptian? Because I have NEVER heard it before, not from my Egyptian friends, or Egyptian movies, or Egyptian songs. Don't mean to doubt a native speaker, but I'm sure a few others will be surprised if "ma 3aayezsh" is a proper construction.

In any case, if it _is_ used in Egypt, can you negate any present participle in this way? E.g. ma saame3sh instead of mesh saame3? Again, this sounds funny to me!


----------



## cherine

ma3awezsh is used in EA, but I think it's either a regional dialect/accent (I thought it's Upper-Egyptian صعيدي , but seeing that Iskandarany uses it, it seems I was wrong).
But again, when I think the feminine form "masam3aash", I can only remember dramas taking place in Upper Egypt.

Personally, I don't use it, and I don't hear it as commonly as مش عايز/عاوز .

Note that مش itself has two pronunciations: mosh and mesh.

Ma7ada: I think we can structures like ما داخلش، ما خارجش، ما كاتبش، ما سامعش، ما شايفش ...etc are not the rule or the common way to say these, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's the dialect or accent of many persons in Egypt.


----------



## Ghabi

But we also say مانيش, so perhaps ما عايزش isn't really that strange after all?


----------



## cherine

Yes, we say manish (I'm not).
And ما عايزش isn't really strange, it's just not common every where.


----------



## إسكندراني

Maybe my dialect has changed a little bit since I've lived outside Egypt and spoken with Arabs from all over? But it's so much easier on my tongue to say ماعايزش مارايحش etc than مش رايح - I reserve مش for negating 'real nouns' البتاعة دي مش لعبة خلّيها محطوطة ف مكانها. And مش as observed can always be replaced by ماهيّاش مانيّاش etc as appropriate. In fact I don't like using مش at all myself and don't know how to justify that


----------



## ma7adan

إسكندراني said:


> But it's so much easier on my tongue to say ماعايزش مارايحش etc than مش رايح



Yeah, it's beginning to grow on me too! I'll start doing it to "surprise" my friends and family haha =)


----------



## Silky_Sword

Abu Rashid said:


> definitely mish 3aawiz.
> 
> 3aawiz is a noun, and only verbs are negated the other way.



actually, brother, '3aawez' is 'I want'. Al-3ewaz is the noun, meaning 'not having' or 'poverty' or 'lacking something'.



cherine said:


> Ma7ada: I think we can structures like ما داخلش، ما خارجش، ما كاتبش، ما سامعش، ما شايفش ...etc are not the rule or the common way to say these, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's the dialect or accent of many persons in Egypt.



I remembered the famous Sa3idi line ما خبرش now


----------



## cherine

Silky_Sword said:


> actually, brother, '3aawez' is 'I want'. Al-3ewaz is the noun, meaning 'not having' or 'poverty' or 'lacking something'.


He meant that عاوز is an اسم not a فعل . Which is true of course.


> I remembered the famous Sa3idi line ما خبرش now


----------



## إسكندراني

cherine said:


> He meant that عاوز is an اسم not a فعل . Which is true of course.


It's quite strange since - and I will attempt a feat of linguistics here - the word عايز is *grammatically a noun* but *semantically a verb*, as I think I saw mentioned on this forum somewhere . Maybe that's why it's so weird to negate?


----------



## clevermizo

^That's a good point. The question is then, can you ever negate regular nouns with ma_š rather than meš/moš. Can you say:

هو ممعلمش

instead of

هو مش معلم.

I presume the latter is the only correct one, but maybe not. Can you say:

هو مزعلانش?

or only

هو مش زعلان?

If so then we see that the variation of using ما ش instead of مش can occur with words that, although not verbs, seem to act like them sometimes.


----------



## إسكندراني

Mizo is spot on


----------



## Abu Rashid

Silky_Sword said:
			
		

> actually, brother, '3aawez' is 'I want'. Al-3ewaz is the noun, meaning 'not having' or 'poverty' or 'lacking something'.



Actually it's "wanter" (the one who wants). As far as I'm aware it's اسم الفاعل

Grammatically speaking it's definitely a noun, it's the person who is doing the action (active participle), not the action itself, as a verb would be.


----------



## cherine

Ok, talking about semantically vs. grammatically is too complicated for me, so I won't try to discuss the terms 

But to reply to Mizo's post: we do not say ما زعلانش nor ما مُدَرِّسش (we don't use mo3allim for "teacher" in EA). But we use ma ---sh with اسم الفاعل.
So, I think we all agree even if we use different terminology.


----------



## Hemza

إسكندراني said:


> Maybe my dialect has changed a little bit since I've lived outside Egypt and spoken with Arabs from all over? But it's so much easier on my tongue to say ماعايزش مارايحش etc than مش رايح - I reserve مش for negating 'real nouns' البتاعة دي مش لعبة خلّيها محطوطة ف مكانها. And مش as observed can always be replaced by ماهيّاش مانيّاش etc as appropriate. In fact I don't like using مش at all myself and don't know how to justify that



Sorry to revive this ooooold thread but may be, have you been influenced by Moroccans, because both constructions are used in Morocco:
"manish+verb" or "ma+verb+sh" like we can say:
"manish sami3" or "ma sama3tsh"

It's just an hypothesis lol but contrary to some people say, the construction "ma+verb+sh" exists, it's not incorrect.


----------



## figgles

Hello all! I hopefully have a very simple question!

In my (very limited!) study of Egyptian Arabic verbs, I've seen the negative of verbs in the perfect tense and bi-imperfect tense using ma ... sh. However, after purchasing a book with EA verb tenses, I see that there is a table for negating the (bare?) imperfect using ma .. sh. I tried to think of when that would be used or when I might have heard it, but nothing came to mind.

I've seen this example "mish 3aayiz aktib", but never "3aayiz maktibsh" or anything like that.

Where might something like this be used?


----------



## analeeh

As far as I know it's just a variant of the form with b- [reply to deleted content]. Though I suppose there are times when you need to negate the subjunctive specifically... قلتله مايكتبش 'I told him not to write'.


----------



## elroy

Basically, you should be able to use the negative form wherever you could use the non-negative form.  Even "3aayiz maktibsh" is thinkable, although I assume most of the time it would be "mush 3aayiz aktib."
[reply to deleted content]


----------

