Breakdown of أغلبية الساكنين هنا بالغون.
الal
the
هناhunâ
here
ساكنsâkin
resident / living
أغلبيةaghlabiyya
majority
بالغbâligh
adult
Questions & Answers about أغلبية الساكنين هنا بالغون.
Both الساكنين and بالغون are active participles. How do they work in this sentence?
In Arabic, active participles of Form I verbs often act as nouns to describe someone in a continuous state. الساكنين comes from the verb meaning 'to reside' and means 'the ones currently residing' (the residents). بالغون comes from 'to reach' and means 'those who are in the state of having reached maturity' (adults).
Why does الساكنين end in ـين (-in) but بالغون ends in ـون (-un)?
Both are regular masculine plurals, but their grammatical roles change their endings. الساكنين is the second part of a possession phrase or Idafa (أغلبية الساكنين = majority of the residents), so it must take the genitive ending ـين. بالغون is the predicate (the core news of the sentence), which requires the nominative ending ـون.
Since أغلبية (majority) is a feminine noun, shouldn't the predicate بالغون be feminine too?
Even though أغلبية is technically the subject, the sentence is describing the mixed or masculine group of residents (الساكنين). When using quantity words like majority, all, or some, Arabic often makes the predicate agree with the actual group being talked about, rather than the feminine quantity word itself.
What verb root does بالغون come from to mean 'adults'?
It comes from the root ب-ل-غ, which means 'to reach' or 'to arrive'. As an active participle, it literally translates to 'ones who have reached'. In everyday Arabic, this is the standard term for people who have reached adulthood.
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