أُمِّيmy mother

Example sentences

• فَإِذَا بِأُمِّي تُوَقِدُ تَنُّورًا لَنَا،

  Then my mother lit an oven for us.

  بِأُمِّي — with my mother. This bundles the preposition bi- with a noun and the attached 'my', so one word holds 'with my mother'. After the surprise-frame word before it, bi- here is the idiomatic marker of the thing suddenly come upon, not literal accompaniment: 'and there was my mother...'. The suffix '-i' fixes the mother as the narrator's own.

  From: A Night of Reckoning →

• فَقَالَ عُمَرُ الآنَ أَكُونُ أَدْرَكْتُ أُمِّي،

  Then Umar said, "Have I now reached my mother?"

  أُمِّي — my mother. This noun, 'mother', has the 'my' pronoun on its end and stands as the object of 'requited'. Arabic attaches the owner straight onto the noun. So 'my mother' is the one Umar wonders whether he has repaid.

  From: Honoring Parents →

• حَمَلْتُ أُمِّي عَلَى رَقَبَتِي مِنْ خُرَاسَانَ

  I carried my mother on my neck from Khurasan.

  أُمِّي — my mother. A noun with the suffix -i ('my') attached at its end, the normal Arabic way of showing possession by tacking the owner onto the noun rather than placing a separate word before it. This is the thing carried, the object of 'I carried'. The attached 'my' makes it personal and points straight back to the speaker of the verb.

  From: Honoring Parents →

• قَالَ أَبُو بَكْرٍ فِدًى لَهُ بِأَبِي وَأُمِّي،

  Abu Bakr said, "May my father and mother be ransomed for him."

  وَأُمِّي — and my mother. The wa- here simply joins a second item to the oath, adding 'and my mother' to 'my father'. The noun carries 'my' as a fused suffix, so the pair 'my father and my mother' completes what is offered up in devotion.

  From: The Secret Migration →