عائلات كثيرة

[Zu-lKurnein]

Hey everyone!
I'm reading through some easy Arabic texts for beginners, and I've encountered the following sentence: إن العثور على غرفة في فندق صعب في هذا الوقت من السنة لأن هناك عائلات كثيرة من دول الخليج تقضي عطلة الصيف في لبنان. - what I've spotted, and what has eventually brough me here, is that the noun "عائلات" (families) is treated as an inanimate nount for some reason, since the adjective that describes it (كثيرة) is placed in the feminine singular, not feminine plural, and so is the verb "تقضي" - third person feminine singular, not "يقضين".

Shound't collective nounts that refer to people be treated as animate nouns, and hence use the respective plural forms and verb conjugations? Or is it a typo/slangish?

Thanks for your replies in advance!

 

[HotIcyDonut]

Shound't collective nounts that refer to people be treated as animate nouns,

Firstly, عائلة is still inanimate by itself. So yeah, its plural is treated as feminine singular.

Secondly, Classical Arabic allows any inanimate nouns in plural to be treated as feminine plural (instead of feminine singular). Even if the original singular noun is masculine. E.g. أيام طويلات and أيام طويلة would both be correct in Classical Arabic (in Modern, only أيام طويلة would be correct) even though يوم is masculine. So عائلات كثيرات يقضين would actually be correct in Classical Arabic.

 

[Mahaodeh]

Shound't collective nounts that refer to people be treated as animate nouns,

Actually, no.
Collective nouns in Arabic are either اسم الجمع or اسم الجنس الجمعي. These are generally treated as singular with some exceptions.

However, عائلات is not one of them. It’s a regular plural not a collective noun, hence plural rules apply. HotIcyDonut is generally right: the noun is غير عاقل despite the members of the family being عاقل.

 

[Zu-lKurnein]

Thank you for your clarifications! I was just slightly confused by the thought that members of the family are actually people, so I assumed that the noun "family" should be treated respectively as well.