"جورج وَروزا مِن لُبنان."
Translation:George and Rosa are from Lebanon.
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1747
The -an sound at the end of "Rosa" is a mistake by the TTS engine in this case. You pronounce "Rosa" the same way you would in English, without any case endings.
- 1387
Is that because the last proper noun in a series doesn't take a case ending or some other reason?
- 1747
It's because it ends in the sound -aa. Nouns ending in -aa don't receive case endings; with -ii or -uu it's a bit more complex. Besides, foreign proper nouns, AND feminine proper nouns, wouldn't receive nunation anyhow, their case ending would be a simple short vowel.
I came here to ask about that. I've seen it a couple times, but don't know what 'nunation', as I've heard it called, is. Does the Duolingo course ever say outright what it is?
- 1747
No, the Duolingo course did not intend to teach it, because it is only ever used in set expressions in dialect, and Duolingo is trying to teach a mix of dialect and MSA.
But anyway, the letter ن, which corresponds to the Latin letter N, is called Nuun. Nunation is the adding of an unwritten -n sound to the case ending of a noun ("case ending" is when you add a little ending to the word to indicate the role it performs in the sentence, like whether it does the action, or the action is done to it, or it owns something, etc. etc.). Nunation occurs in some situations, like at the end of many singular nouns not defined by al-, and doesn't occur in others, like with nouns definite by al-.
As I said, it is not normally written, but if you want to express it in writing, you double the diacritic used for the vowel before it. So a nunation of an A sound, "-an," is written
كتابًا
, and of an I sound, "-in," is written:
كتابٍ
You're correct. In some Arab countries, a space is added between the noun and the و to make that clearer. Ironically, Lebanon is one of those countries that adds that space and I'm from Lebanon :-) So we'd write it as: و روزا
Thank you for that clarification! I'm currently learing Arabic for volunteer work and to surprise a friend from Lebanon (Beirut) next time I see her! :)
Why did they make "loob'n-en" lebanon and "soor-ya" into syria in english? Why did they change the vowels I wonder?
- 1747
The letter Y in the word "Syria" represents Greek upsilon. That letter was pronounced like German Ü in the past, which is a sound between U and I, so Arabic turned it into U and English into I. "Lebanon" comes from Hebrew, and the sound O in Hebrew often corresponds to A in Arabic.
There was no "Are" choice box, i cannot get it correct because there is no "are" box.
Just report it. The comments can't help you out. As far as I know, course creators/moderators don't check comments.