The Arabic word عيد (3iid)

Today, we celebrate two religious holidays.
Eid al-Fitr och Feast of the Ascension.
Both contain the Arabic word (3iid) that means holiday or feast.

We talked a bit about the word (3iid) in the previous blog post. Today, we will go into more details about the word.

Write 3iid in arabic

The Arabic word (3iid) has three letters: ayn, ya and dal.

the letter ayn ع

If you click on the eye and scroll down, you will see the letters in (3iid) separately. First, there is the letter ayn. It is written like this when it is not in attached to any other letter:

In the word (3iid) the letter ayn comes first. Letters that come first in words usually have their initial form. The letter ayn looks like this in its initial form:

You may be wondering why I write ayn as the number 3. This is because ayn is written that way in the Arabic chat alphabet. Ayn actually looks like a reverse third.

The letter 3ayn is pronounced like this:

The pronunciation is far back in the throat. If you visit the page about the letter ayn, you will get a detailed description of the pronunciation. In addition, you will see all four forms of the letter and examples of how they are used.

There is a small line under the letter ayn. That is the short vowel i.

the letter ya ي

In the middle of (3iid) is the letter ya, which is actually the last letter of the Arabic alphabet. The letter ya is written like this when it is not attached to any other letter:

Letters in the middle of words usually have their medial shape. Ya looks like this in its medial shape:

What is interesting about ya is that it can function both as a consonant and a vowel. When ya functions as a consonant, it is pronounced like and English y in yes.

When ya functions as a vowel, it is pronounced as a long (ii). This happens when ya has the short vowel (i) before it and no vowel after it. That's exactly the case in the word (3iid).

We now have ayn, short i and ya which gives this:

the letter dal د

Now we come to the third and final letter in (3iid). That is the letter dal. The letter dal is written like this when it is not attached to another letter:

Letters that come at the end of words usually have their final form. Dal looks like this in its final form:

Dal is pronounced like an English d.

Now we have come so far that we can write the word (3iid).

If you listen to the audio clip above, you first hear the pronunciation of (3iid). Then you hear the pronunciation of ('a3yaad), which is the plural of the word, ie "holidays".

If you liked this detailed description, I suggest that you read the introduction to writing in Arabic.

Use (3iid) in ownership constructions

Today (Thursday) Eid al-fiTr is celebrated, which I would rather write as (3iid al-fiTr). We already learned in the previous blog post that fiTr means breaking of the fast.

(3iid al-fiTr) literally means "the holiday of the breaking of the fast".

Today, we also celebrate Feast of the Ascension. In Arabic it is called (3iid aS-Su3uud).

You can click on the eye and see that (Su3uud) means "ascent". (3iid aS-Su3uud) literally means "the feast of the ascent". In other words, very similar to its English name.

This kinds of phrases are called idafa constructions or ownership constructions. The first word, which is (3iid) in these examples, ends in a short vowel. In this case, it is u (3iidu). But it can also be a or i, depending on the grammatical case of the phrase. The second word always has genitive case.

I will write a lesson section on idafa constructions. Until then, feel free to look at more examples of idafa constructions.

Use (3iid) with adjectives

When it is (3iid al-fiTr), we say (3iid mubaarak) to each other. The word (mubaarak) is an adjective that means "blessed". (3iid mubaarak) literally means "blessed holiday".

A similar expression is (3iid sa3iid). The word (sa3iid) is an adjective that means "happy". (3iid sa3iid) literally means "happy holiday".

Both of these expressions are examples of how nouns and adjectives are used in Arabic. Unlike in English, the adjective is placed last. The noun and the adjective should have the same grammatical case. In the example above, the words are in the nominative case because they end in (un). The noun and the adjective should also have the same definiteness. In this case, both have indefinite form.

On this website, there are lots of examples of nouns described by adjectives.

Glossary

Here is a list of the words and phrases we have learned.

A challenging sentence with (3iid)

Since Eid al-Fitr and Feast of the Ascension take place on the same day this year, I conclude with this sentence. The sentence is not easy for beginners, but if you click on the eye symbol, you will see details about each individual word.