# بَيْتُ



## Diadem

بَيْتُ itself is declined in the singular number, nominative case, but it has not been declined for definiteness. So, it doesn't mean "a house," and it doesn't mean "the house," right? As such, it's essentially useless except in a grammar book. But, as for an everyday sentence, would anyone ever say it? Would anyone ever say, "...........baytu.........."? (Let's say there was no construct phrase here, e.g. "house of...")


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## abdalhamid

منزل / بيت = house 
دار = home 

But I didn't understand what you want to say , if you can write  in arabic I will can help you .


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## إسكندراني

حسنا فلنفترض أن زائرا سأل مهندسا معماريا «صف لي ما هذا الرسم؟» يمكن أن يرد عليه بالآتي
هذا *بيت* صممته للعميل الفلاني.ـ


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## fdb

baytu can only be used in a construct phrase (اضافة).


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## إسكندراني

That's true, but it can be standalone - as in my example - and carry a تنوين.


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## Diadem

إسكندراني said:


> That's true, but it can be standalone - as in my example - and carry a تنوين.



I meant only بَيْتُ, not بَيْتٌ, and not in a construct phrase. It was just a question I wanted to make sure I understood properly. I thought it could only be in construct phrase as fbd mentioned. I just wanted to make sure.

Now, what you said in Arabic, can you translate to English?


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## HermanTheGerman

Diadem said:


> I thought it could only be in construct phrase as fbd mentioned. I just wanted to make sure.


Nominative nouns with only one damma can indeed only be used in Idafas or with a personal suffix. E.g. baytu-hu (= his house).
However, there's a small group of nouns (usually refererred to in Arabic as ممنوع من الصرف / غير منصرف  and diptotes in English) that are always used with only one damma or fatha. For more information see this WR thread.


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## Abu Talha

I think there is one possibility: if one is using the vocative يا بيتُ but I don't think it is an everyday sentence.


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## fdb

Correct. If you are addressing a house (“Oh house!”) you would say _yā baytu_, without _tanwīn._ Also, at the end a verse of poetry you would say _baytu_, or rather _baytū_ (written بيت but pronounced with a long _ū_) instead of _baytun_. But otherwise you will find it only in a construct phrase.


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## Ali Smith

Is it true that the difference between a بيت and a منزل is that the former means "house" while the latter means "home"? So, everybody has a منزل but not everybody has a بيت, because lots of people live in apartments, hotels, etc.


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## Mahaodeh

If anything, it’s the opposite. بيت is the place you normally spend the night in whether it was a palace or a tent or cardboard box under a bridge. It can refer to any form of residence.

منزل was originally (that is, in Classical Arabic) the camp in which a Bedouin tribe resides. It’s usually not permanent in the sense that it is composed of tents but they may remain there for extended periods of time. The name is derived from the verb نزل because it is where they got of their rides and unloaded their caravan.

Later it started to be used also for places where travellers would stay on the road, it was similar to a motel, usually a building, another word for it is نزل. Today it refers to a house although in MSA I have heard it used to refer to flats, but never rooms or tents for example.

The word for house in Arabic is دار, it only refers to a building never anything else, with the exception of a few cities named دار السلام here and there (this actually has a religious meaning). It may be used to refer to a building that houses something in particular such as دار القضاء for a court (modern) or دار الخلافة for the official residence of the Caliph (classical).

You have to keep in mind though that the difference between home and house in Arabic are not really strict. Also, home as the region or town that one identifies with is وطن in Arabic, a term that refers to a larger geographic area than بيت.


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## Ali Smith

But the verb نُزُوْل (ض) means "to get off (Fr. _descendre_)" or "to go/come down (Fr. _descendre_)", doesn't it?


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## zj73

Ali Smith said:


> But the verb نُزُوْل (ض) means "to get off (Fr. _descendre_)" or "to go/come down (Fr. _descendre_)", doesn't it?


Yes, and that's why manzil originally meant a destination


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## 𒍝𒊑𒈾 𒂵𒉿𒀉

zj73 said:


> Yes, and that's why manzil originally meant a destination


What's the connection between destination and going down or coming down?


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## bearded

Mahaodeh said:


> with the exception of a few cities named دار السلام here and there


There is also الدار البيضاء.


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## Mahaodeh

bearded said:


> There is also الدار البيضاء.


Up to my knowledge this literally refers to houses not land, as in “the city with white houses”.


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## analeeh

الدار البيضاء originally refers to the fortress built there by the Portuguese, if I remember correctly. I think it might even be a translation of an original Portuguese place-name rather than the other way around. But again, the meaning is a single house.


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## Mahaodeh

Ali Smith said:


> But the verb نُزُوْل (ض) means "to get off (Fr. _descendre_)" or "to go/come down (Fr. _descendre_)", doesn't it?


Yes. When a caravan stops, they literally get _down_ off their horses and camels and get their luggage _down_, the location where they do that - which is usually the where they camp, is called منزل.


zj73 said:


> Yes, and that's why manzil originally meant a destination


I’m not sure what you mean by destination, but if you mean اسم مكان, then yes the word منزل is indeed اسم مكان. However, I wouldn’t call it a destination, a “location noun” is a little more accurate.

If you mean “the place where one intends to go” then no, I don’t know how you came to this conclusion but I can’t see it as accurate.


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## Mahaodeh

analeeh said:


> الدار البيضاء originally refers to the fortress built there by the Portuguese, if I remember correctly. I think it might even be a translation of an original Portuguese place-name rather than the other way around. But again, the meaning is a single house.


Up to my knowledge the city was originally had an Amazige name but a few hundred years ago it was destroyed by an earthquake and Mohammed III rebuilt it and he named it دار البيضاء, but later it changed to الدار البيضاء. I don’t think its name is a translation from Spanish, I don’t see why it would be. I don’t know anything about a fort.

Having said that, I can’t be 100% sure about that. Perhaps someone that knows more about the history of the city can confirm.


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## analeeh

Britannica says:

'An Amazigh (Berber) village called Anfa stood on the present-day site in the 12th century; it became a pirates’ base for harrying Christian ships and was destroyed by the Portuguese in 1468. The Portuguese returned to the area in 1515 and built a new town called Casa Branca (“White House”). It was abandoned in 1755 after a devastating earthquake, but the ʿAlawī sultan Sīdī Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh rebuilt the town in the late 18th century. Spanish merchants, who named it Casablanca, and other European traders began to settle there. The French after a time outnumbered other European settlers, and the name Maison Blanche (also meaning “White House”) became as common as Casablanca.'

Supposedly the Portuguese-era fort is the building now known as السقالة.


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