The other day I was speaking with my fiance and told her that I would speak to her later as I had to run some errands. She then told me khod rahtk. As usual, I had no idea what she was saying. It turns out this Darija phrase means take your time. This had me start to dissect the phrase. I ended up paying a lot of attention to word ra. I’ve heard this being used as verb before. It turns out that ra has a few meanings.
- demonstrative particle used to emphasize or affirm a state or action
- signifies remoteness
- often used with subject of conclusion clause of a conditional sentence
The times I have seen this word in action is when it’s used to emphasize. rahuwu ja – he (definitely) came. This seems to be simple enough. Just prefix the word being emphasized with ra.
The second meaning looks confusing but really it only means that you’re emphasizing that the state or action is not here.
The third and last definition is something I’ve never heard before. Maybe I did hear it before but because I didn’t understand the usage of the word or the sentence was spoken so fast I thought I never heard it before. The definition states if you’re using a conditional statement (if … then) you can use ra as part of the answer of the conditional statement (the then portion). I’ll provide an example to illustrate this.
ila drebtiha raha drebk – if you hit her then she will hit you.
In my opinion this word ra is just a word used to add emphasis in a sentence. It seems although it is used a lot in day to day conversation, it isn’t really needed to construct sentences. If I learn anything new about ra, I will definitely add it to this post.
Word List
| shedd | to hold/fasten/close |
| ga3 | at all |
| juwa | hungry |
| 3atesh | thirsty |
| 7ssan | better, |
| mwali | family/owners |
| shtta | rain |
| wa9ila | maybe |
| 7it | because/since |
| 7ta | even/also |
| fo9 ma | whenever |
| 3asha | to live |
| mziwina | great |
| walla | to become |
| ay | any |
| sab | to find |
| baina | its apparent/obvious |
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