Greeting, replying and thanking

This lesson asks you to identify, from texts you hear, social conventions of language, among them greetings, expressions of courtesy and ways of expressing gratitude. The museum offers two: how a greeting is returned, and what thanks is. The Arabic expressions themselves, formal and informal address, and body language, your class brings. ¹

Listen to a short dialogue and notice who begins and who answers, and the words that acknowledge a kindness. What do they tell you about the social setting?

Two records give the meaning of a word, both from the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence. In the record on greeting with peace, among the senses of taslim in the language is conveying, taslim is the salam, and the jurists' usage does not depart from these senses ². In the record on shukr, shukr in language is the acknowledgement of a kindness received, its spreading and praise of its doer, and it is said only in return for a kindness or favour ^{3 4}. Praise stands beside it: praise (madh) is good speech about a person, and may come before or after a kindness, while gratitude comes only after a kindness ⁴.

The encyclopaedia explains the words as the language uses them and as the jurists use them ². It is not a recording of what people say when they greet and thank one another in a conversation, so the dialogues your class hears are the evidence for that.

The encyclopaedia says gratitude comes only after a kindness, while praise may come before or after one ⁴. Give a reason from a dialogue you hear: when a speaker thanks someone, how can you tell that a kindness has already been done?

• Greeting with peace: the meaning of taslim in the language and in the jurists' usage.
• Shukr: the definition of gratitude, and how the encyclopaedia separates it from praise and commendation.

Read the records on greeting with peace and on shukr. Note the greetings and thanks you hear in a dialogue, and compare them with what the two records say.