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Questions & Answers about الحكم استعمل الصفارة.
How would I pronounce this sentence in Levantine Arabic?
A natural Levantine-style pronunciation is:
el-ḥakam staʿmal eṣ-ṣaffāra
A few pronunciation notes:
- ḥ is a strong, breathy h sound, not the ordinary English h
- ʿ is the sound of ع, which has no exact English equivalent
- ṣ is an emphatic s
- eṣ-ṣaffāra happens because the l of ال blends into the next sound; that is very common in Arabic
You may also hear istaʿmal instead of staʿmal, depending on the speaker and how carefully they are speaking.
What does الحكم mean here, and why doesn’t it mean the judgment or the ruling?
In this sentence, الحكم is understood as the referee.
Arabic script usually leaves out short vowels, so الحكم can represent different words depending on context, including:
- el-ḥakam = the referee
- el-ḥukm = the judgment / the ruling
So the spelling is the same, but the meaning and pronunciation change with context. In a sentence about using a whistle, the referee is the natural reading.
What tense is استعمل, and what exactly does it mean?
استعمل is the past tense verb, meaning .