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- "زَوج مُمتاز"
33 Comments
The -un ending on زَوج is pronounced but not written. I think nunation (-un) pronounced can indicate indefiniteness and that the nunation would get dropped when اَل (ˀal = alif+lam, "the") is added to it at the start to make a noun definite. I'm just a learner, however, so go with what a moderator says and locate an Arabic grammar to explain it (The one I use is A. S. Tritton, Arabic, pp. 24-25 Lesson 1 "Noun and Articles"). I think both the noun and the adjective get the -un ending, however, as in "a big garden" نُسْتَان كَبِيرٌ (= my first time using an Arabic keyboard; cut-and-pasted; took me about ten minutes to figure out).
Got a case of the over-literal translation going on. "Great" or "excellent" husband doesnt take, only "amazing" or "outstanding". It may be that ممتاز means literally "that which outstands", im not at that level yet, but if that is so then the course is following the letter rather than the spirit of the rule, not a good practice in language teaching.
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Thanks for answering :)
There are other examples on duolingo where a word is gendered, but it accepts an 'ungendered' translation. For example, in many sentences 'teacher' is accepted as a translation for معلّمة. You are not required to translate this by 'female teacher'.
Hence I though 'spouse' might work for زوج, even though the word is of course masculine.
I see how 'husband' would be the preferential - bc unambiguous - translation, but was just wondering whether it's necessary to mark 'spouse' as wrong.
Was also curious about excellent vs amazing as a translation for ممتاز.
For say the word 'معلمة', I feel the nongendered translation is accepted because there is no specific gendered word for 'male teacher' and another for 'female teacher,' unlike say with 'husband'
Personally I'm with you in principle though.
ممتاز the closest would be 'excellent', it is actually not 'amazing' because it does not have that quality of inciting a feeling of amazement - infact there is another word for it: مبهر moreover 'amazing' is not used as frequently in Arabic as it would be in say, American English...
which reminds me of this somehow... here's another word lost to misuse :D 'awesome' https://youtu.be/-tVqN0prMro
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It sounds like zawjin to me but should be zawjun which is the nominative/subjective case. Makes it hard for us students.