Is it TWICE, or ...
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salaam
can anyone please enlighten me on this word, whether it means 'twice' or 'bitter'?
it appears in 2229 (The divorce is allowed twice......)
please anyone.
thanks.
joe
If it were to mean "better", it should be qualifying a feminine dual, because it is the dual of "murra bitter; fem adj". Since the only noun we have before it is "altalaaq divorce", a singular masculine, then it cannot be qualifying it.
Conclusion It can only mean twice -
salaam samia,
hope i'm not too much of a bother
sorry, but it just did not sink in. in my heart, i mean. but please excuse me, i have no formal training in Arabic. so, sometimes, i have to spend much time on some words.
upon checking al-Qur'an, i discovered that 'marratani' (the Arabic is as in the first post), only appeared once. otherwise, to describe 'twice' or 'two times', 'marrataini' was employed.
and it came across my mind that 'kitabani' is 'two books', and 'baytani' is 'two houses.'
since 'marratani' has another meaning i.e. bitter, or painful, can the word also mean 'twice as bitter' or 'twice as painful'? is it correct grammatically?
in this case, then 2229 will be something like this;
'Divorce is twice as painful,' or 'Divorce is twice as bitter.'
(at this moment, we are not discussing the implications, please.)
thanks samia. and peace be upon you.
joe.
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Salaam Joe
kitab and bayt are nouns. "murra" is a feminine adjective (murr is the masculine). It still has to follow the qualified noun in gender.
Moreover, when the adjetive is in the dual or the plural, the qualified noun must have also been in the dual or plural. To read it as "marratan twice", it has to follow the adjective, (the adjectve must also be mentioned), just as you say in English "twice as bitter", having both "twice" and "bitter" in your phrase. This is not the case in this verse.