Possession in Tunisian Colloquial Arabic

Expressing possession in Tunisian colloquial Arabic is similar to expression possession in MSA, but there are some differences. Like in MSA, we use the semi-preposition عند to say “I have,” “you have,” “he/she has,” et cetera.  Tunisian Arabic also uses possessive suffixes similar to MSA, as in كتابي “my book.“ But for the third person masculine, the pronunciation is different. In MSA we might hay دارهُ “his house,” but in TCA we lose the aspiration, so instead we say دارو. Since TCA has no standardized orthography, you might see it spelled both ways, but it’s pronounced like “ooh,” not like “who.”

Students of MSA are all familiar with the iḍāfah. In MSA, if we need to describe the possessive relationship between two nouns, the iḍāfah is our only option. So we might say دار امي “my mother’s house” of كيلو موز “a kilo of bananas.” In Tunisian Arabic, there is an additional way to express the possessive relationship between two nouns: with the semi-preposition متاع (best translated as “of” or “belonging to”). Sometimes either an iḍāfah clause or متاع can be used, sometimes only an iḍāfah clause works, and sometimes متاع is required. However, in most situation, متاع will make sense. It is beyond the scope of this lesson to explain where متاع should and should not be used, so instead I simply suggest to default to متاع when in doubt.^[1]