Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs: Anki Flashcards

The over 2000 flashcards are meant to be used as a study tool in conjunction with the book The Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs. There is one flashcard for each of the example sentences from the book. However, the verb in question is replaced in the sentence with an English prompt (translation) in square brackets. The prompt is meant to help you determine the verb form needed in the sentence, but it often differs from the more natural English translation. For example, an active participle is shown in the prompt as an English gerund (verb with -ing). However, remember that the active participle in Egyptian Arabic is often used to show a past action with a present result, similar to the present perfect tense in English.  

The prompt will show a subject pronoun (he, she, etc.) when the subject cannot be inferred from the rest of the sentence. Gender (m = masculine; f = feminine) and number (pl = plural) are also shown when helpful. Below the sentence, you will see “Show Hint.” Click on this to reveal the verb in its base form. Now, you just need to determine the correctly conjugated form of this verb. Say it out loud or write it down on paper. (The cards do not allow typed answers because even one difference in tashkeel (diacritics) will cause the card not to match the answer and be counted as incorrect.) If you are unsure how to conjugate the verb or prefer to locate the form (as a kind of ‘multiple choice’), refer to the corresponding page in the book–the table number is given below the Hint. Just be sure not to look at the following page with the example sentences if you look up a table! When you click on the “Show Answer” button, you will see the complete sentence, the English translation, and hear the audio.

The deck also includes cards for the basic verb forms (3rd person singular perfect and imperfect forms and masdar(s)). You will be tested Arabic-English and English-Arabic. To study the verbs’ meanings in isolation (without the example sentences), create a custom study deck choosing the tag 0_verbs.