Learn Hardcore Arabic (Modern Standard): بعد العشاء آخذ الطبق والملعقة إلى المطبخ، ثم أغسلهما. - After dinner I take the plate and the spoon to the kitchen, then I wash them.

بعد العشاء آخذ الطبق والملعقة إلى المطبخ، ثم أغسلهما.ba'da al-'ashâ'i âkhudhu at-tabaqa wal-mil'aqata ilâ al-matbakhi, thumma aghsiluhumâ.

After dinner I take the plate and the spoon to the kitchen, then I wash them.

Breakdown of بعد العشاء آخذ الطبق والملعقة إلى المطبخ، ثم أغسلهما.

Questions & Answers about بعد العشاء آخذ الطبق والملعقة إلى المطبخ، ثم أغسلهما.

What does بعد العشاء mean grammatically?

بعد means after. In this sentence, بعد العشاء is a time expression meaning after dinner.

Grammatically, بعد is followed by a noun in the genitive, so in fully vowelled Arabic you would have:

بعدَ العشاءِ

You can think of it as a set phrase: after + noun.

Why does العشاء have الـ?

Here العشاء means dinner/supper, and Arabic commonly uses the definite article الـ in expressions like this.

So بعد العشاء is the natural way to say after dinner.

In context, العشاء can also mean the night prayer in some situations, but here it clearly means the evening meal.

Is آخذ a present-tense verb here?

Yes. Here آخذ means I take.

In fully vowelled MSA, it would normally be written:

آخُذُ

Without vowel marks, آخذ can look ambiguous, because the same spelling can also represent an active participle in other contexts. But in this sentence, the meaning and structure make it clear that it is the verb I take.