Grammar:  “There is” and “There is not”

105 Grammar: “There is” and “There is not”

There is/are: فيه

“There is” or “there are” is communicated with the word فيه (fii) followed by an undefined noun (i.e. a noun without the definite article ال).

There is a book. فيه كتاب

There are students in the school? فيه طلاب في المدرسة؟

ُThere isn’t/there aren’t: مافيش

There isn’t or there aren’t is communicated with the word مافيش (mafiish) followed by an undefined noun.

There isn’t a book. مافيش كتاب

There are no students in the school? مافيش طلاب في المدرسة؟

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Introduction to Arabic: Egyptian Arabic for first-year students Copyright © 2023 by David Hollenberg; Amira Ghazy; Abdulrahman Eissa; Hanan Elsherif; Benjamin Loy; and Kerlos Rizk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.