سنة / عام (year)

[greg from vancouver]

Ok- here's one that's probably easy... please explain the difference in usage between these 2 words for "year"

سنة
عام

Thanks,
Greg

 

[elroy]

There is no difference in meaning, and most of the time they can be used interchangeably. Exceptions include set expressions; for example, we say كل عام وأنت بخير and رأس السنة (and not سنة and العام, respectively). Also, when you say your age you usually use سنة and not عام.

 

[българин]

would that be pronounced
ayam
or
yam

 

[elroy]

Neither - it's "3aam." (The 3 represents the ع sound.)

 

[Josh_]

There is no difference in meaning, and most of the time they can be used interchangeably. Exceptions include set expressions; for example, we say كل عام وأنت بخير and رأس السنة (and not سنة and العام, respectively). Also, when you say your age you usually use سنة and not عام.

I'm not so sure about the first one, I have heard it both ways -- كل عام وأنت بخير and كل سنة وأنت بخير . In Egypt they say "kull sana wa-inta Tayyib.

I agree about رأس السنة , though.

 

[elroy]

I'm not so sure about the first one, I have heard it both ways -- كل عام وأنت بخير and كل سنة وأنت بخير . In Egypt they say "kull sana wa-inta Tayyib.

There is some flexibility in colloquial Arabic. In Palestinian Arabic, we most commonly say "kul sanne w2inte saalem" or "kul 3aam u inte bkheer" but both "kul sanne w2inte bkheer" and "kul 3aam u inte saalem" are heard - although they do sound a bit "off" (cf. "happy Christmas" in American English).

In MSA, though, the standard expression is كل عام وأنت بخير. There is a meager 63 Google results for the alternative with سنة, as opposed to 30,000+ for the common variant.

When a question does not specify a variant of Arabic, I answer it under the assumption that it is about MSA.

 

[Josh_]

When a question does not specify a variant of Arabic, I answer it under the assumption that it is about MSA.

m-ana 3aarif, wa-ana kamaan. I was told that both can be used in MSA by an Arabic professor, but I will ask again to be sure as it was quite a while ago that I heard this.

 

[LeeQS]

Ok- here's one that's probably easy... please explain the difference in usage between these 2 words for "year"

سنة
عام

Thanks,
Greg

One small remark for my debut here

In Iraqi dialect:

السنة - means "this year"
العام - means... "last year"



regards
przemek

 

[elroy]

One small remark for my debut here

In Iraqi dialect:

السنة - means "this year"
العام - means... "last year"



regards
przemek

Yesss! It's the same in Palestinian Arabic!

I don't think this significant and nifty difference would have occurred to me, since I use these words intuitively. That's why we need the help of foreigners who have learned most of the vocab systematically.

Great debut! Welcome to the forums.

 

[Hafiz Ahmad]

One small remark for my debut here

In Iraqi dialect:

السنة - means "this year"
العام - means... "last year"



regards
przemek

ولقد أرسلنا نوحا إلى قومه فلبث فيهم ألف سنة إلا خمسين عاما
Why both words were used in one sentence.

 

[elroy]

Probably just to avoid redundancy. They mean the same thing in that sentence.

 

[Mahaodeh]

Why both words were used in one sentence.

Since this is Classical Arabic I’ll have to mention a distinction that may have existed in CA. I say may because most dictionaries don’t mention it, and the one that does, لسان العرب, says “they say”, as if the author is not confident about this so he’s attributing it to someone else.

The distinction is that سنة refers to a whole year from a certain day to the day preceding it in the following year, i.e. it is exactly 365 days if we are talking about a solar year or 354 days if it’s a lunar year.

عام is a year in a more approximate sense, it’s calculated from one season in one year to the same season in the next but not necessarily with exact number of days.

I don’t know if this helps, but with regards to this particular aya, if the distinction actually existed then the whole age is 950 years -/+ a month or two, otherwise it would be exactly 950 years.

 

[phoenix_rising]

ولقد أرسلنا نوحا إلى قومه فلبث فيهم ألف سنة إلا خمسين عاما
Why both words were used in one sentence.

In Qur'anic Arabic, "sanat" means a year of hardship or a typical year because life is hard, while "3aam" means a year of ease. So that would make Noah not 950 years old but rather 1,050 years, the latter 50 years are years of ease because all the disbelievers were destroyed in the flood. Others have counted it differently, and Allah knows best.

Note how this is also the usage in the story of Joseph in the Qur'an, the plural of the word "sanat" is used for the normal years and the years of drought, but the final year when the rains come, the term "3aam" is used again:

ثُمَّ يَأْتِي مِن بَعْدِ ذَٰلِكَ عَامٌ فِيهِ يُغَاثُ النَّاسُ وَفِيهِ يَعْصِرُونَ

 

[Mahaodeh]

In Qur'anic Arabic, "sanat" means a year of hardship or a typical year because life is hard, while "3aam" means a year of ease.

Yes, I’ve read and heard that a lot, but the evidence is pretty weak. The only aya that mentions العام in a positive sense is the one you mentioned, but العام is mentioned 8 times in the Quran, one is positive, 4 times neutral, and twice negatively in the sense of hardship!

فَأَمَاتَهُ اللَّهُ مِائَةَ عَامٍ ثُمَّ بَعَثَهُ - البقرة
وَوَصَّيْنَا الْإِنسَانَ بِوَالِدَيْهِ حَمَلَتْهُ أُمُّهُ وَهْنًا عَلَىٰ وَهْنٍوَفِصَالُهُ فِي عَامَيْنِ - لقمان
(The eighth time is still talking about the dead man).
سنة is also mentioned 8 times and also only one is really negative, one of them you can argue that it’s negative, and one is actually positive:
قَالَ تَزْرَعُونَ سَبْعَ سِنِينَ دَأَبًا فَمَا حَصَدتُّمْ فَذَرُوهُ فِيسُنبُلِهِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا مِّمَّا تَأْكُلُونَ - يوسف
These are the “good years”, which are followed by the bad ones:
ثُمَّ يَأْتِي مِن بَعْدِ ذَٰلِكَ سَبْعٌ شِدَادٌ

We can assume here that what is meant is سبع سنين, implying that the Quran used سنين either for both the hard and the easy years, or it used it for the easy years only. In either case it contradicts the theory.

There is also no evidence of that in other Classical sources, including dictionaries that mostly just use the words as synonyms.