Breakdown of يذهب الموظفون إلى المطعم بعد العمل.
الal
the
موظفmuwazzaf
employee
ذهبdhahaba
to go
إلىilâ
to
مطعمmat'am
restaurant
عملamal
work
بعدba'da
after
Questions & Answers about يذهب الموظفون إلى المطعم بعد العمل.
Since this lesson is about adverbs of time, how does the word for "after" (بعد) work in this sentence?
The word بعد (ba'da) is an adverb of time. In Arabic, adverbs like this usually act as the first part of a possession phrase (called an idafa). This means it links tightly to the noun after it, almost like saying "the after of the work." Because of this rule, the following noun العمل (the work) is in the genitive case, meaning it would end with a short "i" sound (kasra) if we wrote out all the vowel marks.
Why is the verb يذهب singular ("he goes") when the subject الموظفون ("the employees") is plural?
This is a very important rule in Arabic sentence structure: when a verb comes before its subject, it always stays singular! Because "the employees" is a masculine word, the verb takes the standard "he" form (يذهب). If you changed the sentence order to put the subject first, the verb would have to change to a plural form to match: الموظفون يذهبون.
How is the plural "employees" (الموظفون) formed here?
The singular word for a male employee is موظف (muwazzaf). To make it a regular masculine plural, we add ون (-ūn) to the end. We use the ون ending here specifically because the employees are the subject of the sentence (they are the ones doing the going). If they were the object receiving an action, the ending would change to ين (-īn).
I recognize some letters in المطعم (the restaurant). Is it related to the word for food?
Yes! It shares the same three root letters (ط-ع-م) as the word for food, طعام (ta'aam). In Arabic, adding a "ma-" sound to the beginning of a root often creates a noun describing a physical place where that root's action happens. So, a مطعم (maT'am) is literally a "place of food/eating."
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