رح

See also: رخ

Arabic

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ruħ/

Verb

رُحْ • (ruḥ) (form I)

1. second-person masculine singular active imperative of رَاحَ (rāḥa)

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North Levantine Arabic

Alternative forms

• حـ (ḥa-)

Etymology

Related to راح (rāḥ, “to go”), but the precise link is uncertain:

• Often taken to be a contraction of رايح (rāyiḥ, “going”, present active participle of راح), making the derivation analogous to English going to. The phonetic development is unsatisfactory, however.
• Instead, probably directly from راح (rāḥ, “[he] went”), which many other Arabic varieties use uncontracted for the same purpose. The extension of the 3sg.m perfective to all persons and numbers is also parallelled by a fair number of other particles, including عاد (ʿād, “end up”, conjunction), قام (ʾām, “(loosely) up and”), قال (ʾāl, “apparently, allegedly”), and perhaps لَكَان (lakān, “then, therefore”), and the shortening of the long vowel has precedent in لَقَى (laʾa, “to find”) and لَكَن (lakan, “then, therefore”).

Particle

رَح • (raḥ)

1. going to; used with a following verb to form a future tense

   رح إشرب هالقهوة.

   raḥ ʾišrab ha-l-ʾahwe.

   I'm going to drink this coffee.

Usage notes

• Closer to English going to than will in many cases, the latter instead being expressible by the future-marking sense of بـ (b-).
• Like with عم (ʿam), the verb can appear either with or without the بـ (b-) prefix, with no bearing on the construction's meaning either way. The usage with the b- is primarily found in Lebanon.
• Also like عم (ʿam), can be negated with either ما (mā) or مش (miš).