"I think that she is Avraham's neighbor."
Translation:אני חושבת שהיא שכנה של אברהם.
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Shouldn't it be "a neighbor of Avraham" since it doesn't have a "he"? I reported.
I agree. I think a more suitable translation of the English sentence would be:
אני חושב שהיא השכנה של אברהם
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yes. and since this is possible, given our knowledge of avraham, it should be accepted. duolingo accepts השכנה but calls it a typo
"Neighbor of Avraham" sounds unnatural in English. "Avraham's neighbor" is correct.
I think “a neighbor of Abraham” is a valid translation, which means that she is one of Abraham’s neighbors.
If she is the neighbor of Abraham, does that mean that Abraham has only one neighbor? Not necessarily. Let’s say that Abraham is in the hospital and a woman comes to visit. Only family is allowed to visit. “Who is this woman?” “She’s a neighbor of Abraham” would be the most likely answer, but “She’s the neighbor of Abraham” would also be correct, just as “She’s the teacher of my child” could be said of a woman who is visiting, though the woman is not necessarily the child’s only teacher.
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Whelp, my guess was that the feminine form of "שכן" was "שכנית". Glad to be corrected.
This continues to confuse me. "avraham's dog" would be הכלב של אברהם. Why does "avraham's neighbor" exclude the ה?
Is it the same reason that family members often don't need the ה? Or is there something else I'm missing?
Without the ה it refers to "a neighbor" but with the ה it refers to a specific neighbor. There's a discussion about this question above (see VioletteNoire and Yosef). mgrdAT says DL accepts השכנה but calls it a typo. Abraham has one specific dog. Family member vocab works differently in Semitic languages. (Sometimes family vocabulary comes from Aramaic, where the definite article goes at the end of the word instead of the beginning. But people will use the definite article with these words anyway.) Here's a video overview of family vocab that gives example sentences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vwlknc8FZA
Yes, but I guess I'm asking WHY that is.
If I'm refering to 'a dog' of Avraham's (eg "I think that it is Avraham's dog") I'd still use the hay, wouldn't I, regardless of if it was just one of Avraham's dogs, or the only one? Or would it be more correct to omit it in the former case?
(And if it would be correct to still use it, then why is there the difference between neighbour and dog?)
See the DL Hebrew Tips and Notes on construct state: https://github.com/userscript17/Duolingo-Hebrew-tips-and-notes/blob/master/hebrew-tips-and-notes.md#Construct-state-1