Talk:Al Mastizu/Vocabulary

Pronouns

• The Spanish words for "child", according to Wiktionary, are hijo/hija depending upon the gender (masculine or feminine, respectively) of the person in question. The Arabic pronouns for "he" and "she" are هو huwa/هي hiya, again depending upon the gender. Perhaps the similarities could cause a different set of pronouns for children than for adults? Linguifex 18:18, 30 June 2011 (PDT)
• Sounds good to me. "hel" and "xa" for "he" and "she" adult?--Sam.stutter 04:30, 1 July 2011 (PDT)

Numbers

Here are candidates for the numbers 1-10, based on English, Spanish and Arabic respectively.

	English	Spanish	Arabic
1	wun *	unu	wahid
2	tu	dus *	iznayn
3	zri	tras *	zalaza
4	fur	kwatru	arbaa *
5	fayf	zinku *	hamsa
6	siks	says	sitta *
7	safan *	syata	sabaa
8	ayt *	uxu	zamania
9	nayn	nwafa	tisaa *
10	tan	dyaz	aazra *

Put stars next to any you particularly like. --PeteBleackley 02:46, 8 July 2011 (PDT)

• Starred. One question: In Arabic, the word for "one" can be used as an adjective to mean "alone", "single", or "lonely". Would the derivative of the original Arabic word be retained for this use, or would the new word (if different) meaning "one" take on this role?
• The idea of a word from one language retaining a more specialised sense when its more general meaning is taken over by a word from another source seems like a good one in general terms.--PeteBleackley 01:55, 15 July 2011 (PDT)
• Cool. In that case, I've changed my star (if such is permitted) to wun as opposed to wahid. Linguifex 19:35, 15 July 2011 (PDT)