Grammar points:

-         To say “this” in Tunisian, you can use “he:the” or “hethe:ye”, both have the same meaning and are interchangeable. But they are used with masculine nouns, and the order of the sentence and the structure are different than the English sentence. To say “this book”, in Tunisian you should say “the book this”, which is “li-kte:b he:the” or “li-kte:b hethe:ye”. But, to say “this is a book”, so you must say “he:the/hethe:ye kte:b”.

-          Do not forget to add the article before the word and to add “this” after it.

-          In Tunisian, we never use the auxiliary “to be”, when it is conjugated. i.e. when in English, the forms (am, is, are) are used, so in Tunisian, they are omitted.

For feminine nouns, the corresponding article would be “he:thi” or “hethiyye”, for example kese:t is cassette, we  would say il-kese:t he:thi, this cassette.

For the plural, we use “hethu:me”, these.

-         The possessive adjectives in Tunisian come after the noun and are stuck to it.

For example, see the table below with the word “book”, “Kte:b”

-          The possessive adjective for he, which is [+u], truly is pronounced [+hu], this is in its true Arabic language origin. But in Tunisian sometimes it is pronounced [+h]. So when added after a noun we better use the [+u] pronunciation which is easier to pronounce. But in case the word finishes with a vowel, we must use the [+h] pronunciation. Exple:{ kte:b => kte:b+u}his book, but {khu: => khu:+h}his brother.

The same change occurs with the pronoun “I”, when the word ends with a vowel, below is a table with these endings used with the word [“khu:”/ brother].

Note that the difference is only with “I” and “he”.

-          So, to say “my book”, in Tunisian, you would say “book - my”, which is “kte:bi”. When you want to insist that the book is yours, you can add the personal pronoun after the noun with the possessive adjective, exple: kte:bi e:na.

-          There is another structure for possession, which is similar to the English use of “of”.