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- Topic: Arabic >
- "باكو وَريجا"
46 Comments
Riga is pronounced Riga in any dialect, since it’s a name of a European city. There are just not enough letters in Arabic to represent all sounds. However, just for a heads up. You can use پ for a p sound ڤ for a v sound چ for a ch sound گ for a g sound These are not Arabic letters though, only derived from the Arabic script and used in other central Asian languages such as Persian or Urdu (maybe others as well). Arabs generally do not use them, however, for clarity like if your name is Paul you can Just so to make it clearer write پول
Kind of difficult to guess the meaning of ريجا if I have no idea where Riga is.
IsRiga really correctly pronounced here. It sounds like 'raiuja'. I could not guess it would be Riga.
The funny thing is that "Riga" Is pronounced in 3 different ways during the entire course and only one of them is right. Riga is just Riga but there are inconsistencies between how it is pronounced in the question itself, how it sounds from tapping the word buttons and how it sounds differently when you tap the word. Duolingo should aim for consistency.
I listened to it half a dozen times and settled on "Russia". (It sounds totally unlike every other "Riga" in the course so far...)
So Baku is a capital of Azerbaijan and Riga is a capital of Latvia. Yet why would you include these cities, since they do not have any correlation with the Arab world. Perhaps, Baku is a Muslim city, but Eastern Europe? And why not MENA cities? And frankly these are not very popular cities, no offense. A lot of people would just mistake them for names.
616
We are beginners learning to read. They are using short names that can be written with the letters we have learned so far.
- 616
I don't hear any "nunation", that is an "n" sound, but I do hear the alif being pronounced "eh" rather than "aah", which I just read the other day is a Western Arabic pronunciation; especially a North African way of pronouncing alif. Duolingo says we're being taught MSA. I though there was a standard way of pronouncing the vowels in MSA, but we're getting different pronunciations of the vowels. I don't know why, though.
Update: I just got this question again on a review. Yes, there is an "n" sound at the end of "Riga" when you click on the individual words in the exercise. This is a mistake due to the TTS computer's reading of the final alef.
- 616
The speech of this sentence is way too fast! I had to play it a couple of times to understand "Baku" and ten or so times to figure out all the sounds in "and Riga". It sounds like "bakuwediiyujeh" to me. The "raa" even sounds like "daal"!
Depending on the dialect, is it not correct that it could be either Riga or Rija?
- 616
The Egyptian dialect pronounces "jeem'' as a hard "g" rather than "j".
Update: Something just dawned on me. If the city's name is pronounced with a hard "g", do the countries that pronounce "jeem" as "j", change to pronounce it as "g" to line up with how the country pronounces it's name, or do they stick with the "j" sound?
- 140
Probably depends if they're familiar with the city name or not, and also if there's a standard form in Arabic/their dialect for that city name, which is most likely with large old cities and/or ones that have a long trading history with theirs. Just like how in English we pronounce Paris with the final "s" sounded, because that's the standard in English, but smaller French towns and villages would be pronounced in the French style by those who know French.
You're definitely right and as far as I know it is Rija in standard Arabic regardless of the way Latvians pronounce it (which would be Riga), in the Egyptian dialect it is Riga as well.
- 174
Why use the name of a city that doesn't transliterate into Arabic cleanly? There are plenty that do. Or just use the three dot "gheem" that gets used for most loan-words, even on signs in Egypt where ج is hard.
I have elsewhere seen the transcription ريغا, i.e. ghayn (gh) instead of jiim (j). That is also how Wikipedia (Arabic edition) spells it.
It sounds different to all of us. For me I heard Riga because I was born an Arabian
Sounds more like Rija which is what one would assume with modern standard....also assumes people know Riga is a place
- 331
Zkvw17,
If we had heard "rijan" from the audio, it was incorrect. When we wrote Riga as ريجا, the word should be pronounced as: "riijaa" -- if we follow Standard.
- 382
Arabic pronunciation (and everything else) varies a lot from dialect to dialect. I'm assuming they're teaching us MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) like most Arabic courses. This is basically Qur'anic Arabic adapted to the modern world and is spoken in real life by nobody other than newscasters.
So I'm assuming the spelling is standard and this is the pronunciation as taught for MSA.
It's worth noting that Arabic doesn't generally have a "g" sound. Some other languages which adapted the Arabic writing system and had both "k" and "g" sounds added a new letter for the "g" sound and use this letter only for the "k" sound. For instance Persian and Urdu use گ for "g". Other languages do it differently.
This is not to say that some Arabic dialects might not always pronounce ج as "g". I don't know enough. It could also be that some pronounce it either "k" or "g" depending on context, depending on speaker, or depending on what language the word was borrowed from. Again I don't know enough.
- 558
ok you are kind of right let me explain what we are learning here is the original arabic we call it الفصحة and if you want to read any kind of arabic book not just the qurian this is the way we read it and also write the only different is due to wars and influence by other language the pronunciation had some differences in some words but if you talked with any one بالفصحة they will understand you but do not expect that they will speak to you بالفصحة and each Arab country has its differences
i learned arabic when i was 6 years old as a third language and wanted to practice that after 12 years but this inconsistency is confusing me....Any better advice on learning arabic?
The problem is that there is often a confusion between MSA and Arabic dialects. If you learnt Arabic as a child, it was probably one of the dialects. Written Arabic is always MSA, which is different from dialects. Another problem is transcription. There are so many ways of transliterating or transcribing Arabic into Latin script. My advise is that you first learn the Arabic script properly and how the characters should be pronounced according to MSA. Duolingo is a help, but preferably you also need to consult a text book for Arabic language too. There are a lot on YouTube as well, but be aware that many of the instructors flavour their MSA with their local dialect. That is one of the challenges of Arabic.
Hello, how come the ا sounds like an (aa) in the word 'Baku' alone, when it's actually pronounced with a short (a) in the sentence "Baku wa riga" ?
- 616
It sounds like a long "aa" because that is the sound that alif makes when it follows another letter.
