"ما اسْمِك وَأَيْن بَيْتِك يا أُسْتاذة؟"
Translation:What is your name and where is your house, ma'am?
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It's a bug with Duolingo. Report it to them and hopefully they'll fix it soon. Here's an example of a bug I've sent: https://imgur.com/user/CcfUk2019/posts
1625
The word "ism," meaning "name," is pronounced without the initial vowel unless it starts an utterance. So "maa ismuka" is pronounced "ma smuka" (A long vowel cannot be followed by two consonants in a row in Arabic, so the vowel is also shortened). We indicate this in writing by beginning the word with an 2alif without a hamza, ا rather than إ. There are five other nouns (that you are likely to encounter, that is, plus four more that are more common in Classical Arabic than they are in MSA) that exhibit that same phenomenon:
اِمْرَأَةٌ (woman)
اِبْنٌ (son)
اِبْنَةٌ (daughter)
اِثْنَانِ (two, masculine)
اِثْنَتَانِ (two, feminine)
Using "miss" in this way may be idiomatic in the US, but certainly not in the UK: most women I know would be really enraged if someone addressed them as "miss". I think also that one of the problems here is that English just does not have a formal register in the way that Arabic has, especially on this side of the Atlantic (the Yanks are somewhat more formal than we are). On the other hand, you can't just say "what is your name and where is your house?": it sounds much too abrupt. One would probably say "Could you tell me your name, and where you live?" or something like that. So there are equivalents of what the Arabic is doing, it's just that they are not literal translations of the Arabic.
"Miss" is arguably more flattering because it presumes the person is a young lady as opposed to an old hag. If someone calls you "ma'am in American is generally means you look middle aged. That is what happens in a time of youth worship. Most people don't want to point out that another person looks to be on the downhill side of old.
Miss is actually short for 'mistress'. Mistress is only used now when referring to the head mistress but I think even for that 'head teacher' is preferred these days. The word mistress came to mean a single woman who is having an affair with a married man. If you say 'his mistress', you mean the woman he is having an affair with. When you don't know a woman's age, calling her mistress may make her feel like an elderly spinster who was never eligible for marriage due to some flaw in her looks or personality. It's also often used sarcastically by men who want to annoy or belittle a woman in a sexist manner.
Miss would have been used for school teachers years ago in England, and it is used as a title for women who work in the prison service too. Ma'am is used to address an officer in the military. These cases are irrespective of marital status. In U.S. 'miss' is used with the first name when a nanny is addressing her ward. I noticed Arabic speakers sometimes make the mistake of addressing a woman Miss (firstname), I know they are just trying to be polite, but it really sounds like they are talking to a three year old.
In the UK, if gendered polite forms of address are used at all, often by people in a service role like waiter or police officer, speaking to a member of the public, it would be 'Sir' and 'Madam' (or 'Miss' if the speaker regards the woman as younger) rather than 'ma'am'. "Would Madam like some ratatouille?'" "Excuse me, Madam, I believe you are sitting in this gentleman's reserved seat..." Business letters to people whose name and gender you don't know traditionally began "Dear Sir or Madam". But in our increasingly informal society in the UK ,these terms are rarer, and might as often be used ironically or humorously as in earnest.
It's not normal in England to call a professor ma'am. Professor is a title granted by a university which employs a graduate and Doctor is granted by a university where they studied (Phd). Dr. and Profesor can be used for both men and women. 'Professor' would not be correct for addressing a school teacher.
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This is a very bizarre sentence. Why would someone ask someone's name(meeting them for the first time) and then ask where their house is in the same sentence?
1625
Taking the history of a patient perhaps? But the question should have been "Where do you live?" not "Where is your house?"
1625
It comes from a Persian word that means "master of a craft." It evolved to mean "teacher," and from there, it became "sir/ma'am."
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That's because they only differ by one letter and Duolingo's policy is to count one extra or missing letter as a typo unless it forms a completely new word.
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Just noticed that up until here most of the basic vocabulary is 80% similar to hebrew
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Have you tried Hebrew on Duolingo, phuvtuo? I did, and found we were spoilt in Arabic. We were taught the alphabet in a very gentle way. For the Hebrew course, you have to work on it yourself. I've given up for the time being.
In the nominative case, 2ismik is a Slang (e.g., Levantine). There should be no sound for kaf as, in Slangs, people never spell the ending sounds. However, they don't use maa to question name (because maa is Standard).
If we follow Standard for the sentence above, it is: maa 2ismUki or masmuki (or just masmuk).
So, masmika is a combination of MSA and some dialects, ie. a new language created by Duolingo?
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There are so many "a"s added to words in the voiced version, when there are no "a"s in the spelled version, that it sounds positively Italian-accent. ismikA, ainA, baitikA!!!
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Ha ha ha: when I translated ustedha as madam, it accepted it, but when lady, it said it was mistaken. In England the one is as unlikely as the other.
Did you note that the definition is from the Cambridge dictionary? The Oxford dictionary says much the same thing. I very much doubt that someone from the southern US would be hired by either of those two English universities to write definitions for British English.
1.1British A term of address for female royalty. 1.2British A term of address for a female officer in the police or armed forces who is senior to the speaker. https://www.lexico.com/definition/ma'am