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- "a generous new husband"
"a generous new husband"
Translation:زَوج جَديد كَريم
66 Comments
894
زوج جديد كريم = Generous new husband زوج كريم جديد = New generous husband
The former says that there is a new husband, and that husband is generous, whereas the latter says that there is a generous husband, and that husband is new. The latter kind of implies there are already other "generous husbands" in our lives, and this one is new, and the former implies that there are already other "older husbands" in our lives, and the new one happens to be generous. In Arabic, the order of adjectives is the opposite of that in English, as a general rule, because the adjectives that are closer to the noun in English also need to stay closer to the noun in Arabic, and since the noun comes before the adjectives in Arabic, that means the adjectives that come last in English come first in Arabic.
- 887
husband is زوج،
new is جديد،
generous is كريم، and it also means decent, kind, good, gentle etc.
as you can see, the described word, husband, comes first, and then the adjectives.
- 894
Yes. English derives many words from French and Latin and other languages, but Arabic doesn't have that: many Arabic names and technical terminology are just normal everyday words. Oh, and "karim" also means "dignified"; the word for "dignity" is karaama(-tun) كرامة.
Even the English names have originally been normal, everyday words but due to the extensive borrowing, native speakers probably have no idea about their meanings. For example, Grace and Anna mean the same thing but you can't tell that because the latter is Hebrew.
- 1492
Yes, like Karim Benzema for example. Al-Karim (the Generous) is also one of God's names in the Islamic tradition
I think you just translate the reverse order of the English phrase: first "new" then "generous".
I'm Arabic and most of the time in Arabic we say things in a different order in Arabic.
I agree. How is one supposed to know the word for new when it has not yet been introduced? Jumping to vocabulary words with no introduction is frustrating and demoralizing.
- 894
When a word is presented in amber, that means it is a new word. Hovering over any word at any time with your mouse, or tapping it with your finger if you're on your phone, shows you a pop-up with its meanings. The exception is when you're testing out of a skill, in which case the hover-on feature is disabled, but you ideally shouldn't test out of a skill unless you know its content relatively well.
Thank you. That is helpful, but it would be more helpful if that was explained in the app. This is in beta testing so I'm hoping that someone in development is reading these comments. It was commented elsewhere that the font is way too small and it seems that has been addressed; although it could still be much bigger.
Alphabet4 lesson introduced the word 'new'. I too find the font small and faint so have been relying on a quick press of CONTROL '+' buttons to increase the size :-)
No matter whst i do it will not translate for me, also all words new and old are black. Im on mobile rinning newest updates.
I think they definitely need to add a lesson on sentence structure before diving into the deep end here. Here's a basic lesson on it for the meanwhile: https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/arabic-sentence-structure-nominal-and-verbal-sentences/
I dont know if this will help anyone, but posting in case it will. Otherwise "tsuj1g1r1" left a very helpful explanation.
Sorry to be asking a qn that's not actually relevant to the above, but I've only just found the chat bubble. It's not always visible is it? Qn: often see the 3 at the end of words/sounds, but no explanation of what they sound like or mean. Can anyone help pls? Shokran.
- 894
It's the letter 3ayn ع, which represents a voiced pharyngeal stop/fricative. To pronounce it, try to pronounce an A-sound like that in "father" in as low a pitch as you can, then try to make it even lower than that. Your voice should get a bit creaky and gargly. That's basically what a 3 sounds like.
Is 3 a generic way to describe the letter or is it just used by Duolinguo?
- 894
It's Arabic Chat Alphabet. On the internet, us Arabs frequently use the Latin alphabet to write Arabic. But we obviously won't go through the trouble of using official transliteration conventions like use ʿ for 3ayn, so to express the sounds not found in English/French (Egyptians would base their version on English, Tunisians or the Lebanese on French), we use numbers. We sometimes disagree on what the numbers mean or whether to use numbers for a certain sound at all, but what most of us agree on is that:
2 = ء
3 = ع
3` = غ
5 = خ
7 = ح
- 581
I'm impressed. Because of how you write, I thought you were a native English speaker, with an American accent ; ) who studied Arabic. What Arabic dialect do you speak?
- 585
I know from previous experience what the aa sound should be but I find using the figure 3 just makes me read it as "three". Very confusing.
- 894
I think it depends on whether the adjectives "intersect" or not. Like how in Spanish, if you say "un amigo viejo" ("an old friend"), the person you're describing happens to be both a friend and an old person, but the oldness doesn't describe the friendship itself, he could be a new friend. But if you say "un viejo amigo," you mean a friend whose friendship has lasted for a long time. Likewise, if you think the newness and generousness of the husband are somehow related, that the old husband wasn't generous, or that the generousness of the new husband is what makes him special, you wouldn't use the و, but if he simply happens to be both generous and new, but the two pieces of information aren't connected, and you could drop either without the meaning of the sentence changing, you would. Hope this helps! ;)
If you mean adding "and"/"وَ" between "generous" and "new", then yes, you can do it and it'll work in Arabic just like it would work in English.
- 394
Is there a reason for the change of place of the adjectives? (DL accepts both, just curious.)
It would be helpful if the arabic sentence would be pronounced out loud once the answer is selected or corrected.
- 894
You're not. If you knew everything there is to know about Arabic already, there would be no point to using Duolingo to learn it, now would there?
How can I hear the choices on a phone app please? How will I know if you answer this?
I've writed زَوج جَدید کَریم and when the game said that my answer was wrong, it told me the correct answer was EXACLY what i have writed.
- 894
Arabic ك and Persian ک are encoded as different characters in Unicode. A Persian keyboard isn't enough to write Arabic (at least not without a little tweaking); it doesn't allow you to type ة or أ or ي, for example
This is wrong, Arabic harakat are very crucial here.. it must be: زوج جديد وكريم. Or زوجٌ جديدٌ كريمٌ
- 228
I have not learned sufficient words to translate phrases like this. Maybe I will give up course if this continues
- 581
This is how DuoLingo teaches. We usually get words for the first time in a sentence we are to translate. However, when we put our cursor over the words we can see their meaning.
These exercises are so frustrating. I dont havevl rhe context to get the answers right.
- 585
If you put your cursor over each of the words you should see the meaning. Remember, when there are two or more adjectives the English word order is the opposite to the Arabic so "a new generous husband" (Arabic) becomes "a generous new husband" (English).
Im actually getting discouraged. I earn more xps than is shown on the board. By far
