"יונה באה."

Translation: A dove is coming.

[jakeydan]

how do you know if this is not a proper name? Jonah?

[Chickensnake]

Normally you have to go by context. Here you should know that Jonah is a masculine name and באה is feminine so this must be יונה as in "dove."

[BezalelP]

Yonah can also be a Feminine name, it really is about context in this case.

[Elevisco]

Usually when it's a name the word "yonah" is said with an emphasis on the "yo" unlike here where there is no emphasis on something in the word

[Gerardd88]

So a dove is feminine guessing from the ה?

[BezalelP]

Yes. יונה is feminine.

[Gerardd88]

תודה!
(if google didn't deceive me :) ) EDIT: Well, this right-to-left writing ,definitely deceived me again. God I hate this formatting :D

[AshurBanipal96]

Really suprising how close Aramaic and Hebrew are. Even closer than Hebrew-Arabic so far..

[EliederSousa]

Why we need to put 'A pigeon' with the article, and not only 'pigeon'?

[NaftaliFri1]

Because in English it doesn't make sense without the article

[AbbyYeger]

I wrote "dove is coming" instead of "a dove....." It was wrong

[infinitebuffalo]

As @NaftaliFri1 writes above, "in English it doesn't make sense without the article."

This is the difference between transcription, or what linguists call 'glossing', and translation. Yes, the gloss is just 'dove', because Hebrew doesn't use an indefinite article. However, to be translated correctly, it must also be a valid sentence in the target language, and English requires an indefinite article here.

[rich739183]

Also, "dove is coming" makes sense only if "Dove" is a name, in which case someone might think you're talking about a man named Dov, which is a Hebrew name meaning "bear".

2020-09-13 rich739183

[James903608]

I chose pigeon and was marked wrong. יונה.can be described as a dove or a pigeon. יונה

[Bruce293408]

Pidgeons and doves do not really share the same meaning, at least not in English. Pigeons are good, sturdy, trainable, birds, but they will eat garbage. Doves are smaller, cleaner, eat only natural foods, and have more of a spiritual symbolism.

[danny912421]

Not every language works the same way English does. Many languages, Hebrew including, don't make a distinction between a turtle and a tortoise, either. On the other hand, English has only one word for a lion, unlike Hebrew.

[NoahS2003]

Is the feminine equivalent of Yonah/Jonah also spelled Yonah?

[BezalelP]

If you're asking about Yonah as a person's given name then yes, they are all spelled the same.

[NoahS2003]

So therefore, one could say Jonah/Yonah comes/is coming, right?

[BezalelP]

yes.