Arabic vocabulary
أَلْف is how you say “thousand” in Arabic. Hear it pronounced and see it used in real example sentences from classical texts below.
لحظة أثمرت حرارة القلق ألف سنة،
A moment bore the heat of anxiety for a thousand years.
أَلْفَ — thousand. alf means 'a thousand'; object form here, counting the next word ('a thousand years').
From: Adam's Descent →فقيل لي هذه أمتك، ومعهم سبعون ألفاً يدخلون الجنة بغير حساب ولا عذاب
And it was said to me: This is your nation, and with them are seventy thousand who will enter Paradise without account or punishment.
أَلْفًا — thousand. This is the counted noun after 'seventy', and by the fixed rule for numbers from 11 to 99 it comes SINGULAR and accusative — literally 'seventy thousand', one 'thousand' standing for the whole. The singular accusative is grammar, not a count of one.
From: Those Who Enter Without Account →فيقال من كل ألف تسعمائة وتسعة وتسعون،
It will be said: 'From every thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine,'
أَلْفٍ — thousand. This completes 'every thousand', in the genitive as owner. So the ratio is reckoned per thousand of humankind.
From: The Return of Jesus →فقال الرجل أنا أذهب إليه وأخبره أني اشتريت قصرًا في الجنة بعشرين ألفًا، فلعلّه يعطيني مثلها
So the man said: I will go to him and tell him that I have bought a palace in Paradise for twenty thousand, perhaps he will give me the same.
أَلْفًا — thousand. A counted noun after 'twenty'; after the twenties through nineties Arabic puts the counted noun in the singular accusative, the -an you hear, rather than a plural. So one singular word stands for the whole count.
From: The Reward of Giving →فذهب إلى الوزير وقال له إني اشتريت قصرًا في الجنة بعشرين ألف درهم
So he went to the minister and said to him: I have bought a palace in Paradise for twenty thousand dirhams.
أَلْفِ — thousand. Here 'thousand' heads an 'of' chain with 'dirham' after it, so this counted word itself takes the genitive -i forced by the earlier 'twenty', and then owns the dirham that follows.
From: The Reward of Giving →OpenArabic teaches words like أَلْف through real bilingual reading with native audio and spaced-repetition practice.
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