"هَل أَنْتِ مُهَنْدِسة يا أُسْتاذة؟"
Translation:Are you an engineer, ma'am?
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It's a bug with Duolingo. The makers of the course can't fix it, only the programmers of Duolingo. Send them a bug report here: https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Here's an example of a bug report I've sent: https://imgur.com/gallery/JdHZkXK
Likewise. I was taught in 1st year Arabic to use HaDritak/ik. I think sayd/a could also be acceptable.
1630
7aDritak/ik is the equivalent of German "Sie," not German "Herr/Frau." sayyid/sayyida should also be accepted, yes.
Yeah the lack of Fuṣḥá endings is annoying me, too. I want to learn formal Arabic first, and then branch out into less formal language.
The other frustating thing is the repeatition of words like.... kab bak awee3 baa2...
If the speaker is addressing a stranger, why aren't they using the formal ending for 'your.' As in اسمُكو?
- 1630
There is no such thing as a formal ending for "your." The word you used doesn't mean anything in MSA. In dialect, it could mean "y'all's names"; it's not formal, just plural.
"Ma'am" is very American (or restricted to royalty in the UK). Duo should try and provide more neutral English words understood outside the U.S., like "madam". (which also then wouldn't get split into ma and 'am...). This problem also came up with "you all", a phrase not used in many contexts in the UK.
The reason for that is that Duolingo teaches mainly American English. A lot of British words are accepted as well, but there is still a big bias.
I don't think it's a bug. The word originally means "professor", but it can also be used to address other persons in a respectful manner.
Ostada means a professor or in other language like urdu it means teacher... even in arabic it means professor ok i got it.... but MAAM seriously, this is so confusing...
