32 Comments
That is the shortest word I've ever heard, I have no idea how I'll hear this in regular speech.
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There is actually something wrong with the audio. It's not supposed to sound this short. Please report it using the "Report" button next time :-)
Until this gets fixed anyone curious about how وَ should sound (when used as the word "and") can use google translate English to Arabic. Just translate the English word "and", then use the audio feature. You can compare وَ to وا by translating "wa" to وا and using the audio. Hope that helps.
It's the same as Aramaic and Hebrew ו = letter waw "and" and all other Semitic languages. The audio sounded like "oo" to my ear. I have a question about the two dots under the letter. My understanding is that the dots are under the yaˀ (or yaaˀ) letter sometimes and do not indicate a vowel. (I'm working from A. S. Tritton's Arabic [Teach Yourself Books, 1977]). So this is just the letter called yaaˀ but it's pronounced similar to "oo." Some people are saying there is something wrong with the audio so I'd like to find out what the deal is with how it's pronounced. I notice that Amrhilman says it's pronounced "wa." Perhaps it's a matter of dialect? Are we learning Egyptian Arabic here, Palestinian Arabic? Now I notice that dieprinzessin indicates that both wa and oo are correct.
(speaking of و as a letter) it depends on whether the letter و is functioning as a vowel or a consonant in the word.
if a vowel it is oo
if a consonant it is w (and can be stressed like ww, or with its own vowel like wa,wu,wi, or stressed and vowelled like wwa, wwu, wwi, etc.)
as a word it is wa
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How should this sound? Cant imagine hearing fluent arabic and this sound just thrown in...
There are two ways of pronouncing this letter It can be either 'wa' or 'oo' depending on whether it stands next to consonants or vowels. However both pronunciations are interchangeable. So no worry. But it is never pronounced as short as in the audio here.
It should should like "wa" . The audio is messed up. I hope Duolingo can fix it soon.
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MODS: I noticed throughout ALPHABET1, the vowel sound for "dii" did not have a long pronunciation on audio for Match the Pairs lessons - although it was taught with a long vowel audio on the other lessons throughout the five levels. Also the audio for instances of "wa" was cut off throughout ALPHABET1
please explain how does WA gets to be AND, ...plus the audio its just something like "o" in a low tone
"wa" in Arabic means "and" in English. I do agree, since we do not have learnt its meaning yet in this lesson, we should be able to transcript it in Arabic first and focusing on the translation then.
