Learn Arabic (Modern Standard): البروفة مستمرة ما دامت الأوركسترا جاهزة للعزف الجماعي. - The rehearsal is ongoing as long as the orchestra is ready for collective playing.

البروفة مستمرة ما دامت الأوركسترا جاهزة للعزف الجماعي.al-burûfatu mustamirratun mâ dâmati l-'urkistrâ jâhizatan lil-'azfi l-jamâ'iyyi

The rehearsal is ongoing as long as the orchestra is ready for collective playing.

Breakdown of البروفة مستمرة ما دامت الأوركسترا جاهزة للعزف الجماعي.

Questions & Answers about البروفة مستمرة ما دامت الأوركسترا جاهزة للعزف الجماعي.

Why is there a ـت at the end of ما دامت?

ما دام acts like a regular past-tense verb regarding gender agreement. Because its subject, the foreign loanword الأوركسترا (the orchestra), is treated as a feminine singular noun, the feminine suffix ـت is added to make it ما دامت.

What case ending belongs on جاهزة (ready), and why?

It takes the accusative case (fathatan), read as جاهزةً (jāhizatan). This is because ما دام belongs to the sisters of كان (kāna), a group of verbs that leave their subject in the nominative case but force their predicate—here, جاهزة—into the accusative case.

If الأوركسترا is the nominative subject of ما دامت, why does it lack a visible damma ending?

الأوركسترا is a foreign loanword that ends in a long alif. In Arabic, words ending in a final alif cannot physically take short vowel case markers, so its nominative damma is grammatically assumed but remains invisible and unpronounced.

Why does العزف in للعزف take a single kasra instead of the indefinite double kasra (tanwin)?