"Good evening, what is your name?"
Translation:مَساء اَلْخَيْر، ما ٱسْمَك؟
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Duolingo does not accept the answer correct if i dont type " ٱ " but i can't find how to type it on my arabic keyboard. Can anyone help?
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you can use lexilogos, you can add the "accents". https://www.lexilogos.com/keyboard/arabic.htm Still, I think it souhd be accepted without
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It's not on the Windows Arabic layout. I copied the letter to a text file and paste when necessary.
Duolingo is highly inconsistent on this and it's very annoying! It will accept some answers without the wasla, sometimes indicating incorrectly that it's a typo. And sometimes it will just mark them as wrong. Very frustrating!
Yesterday when I clicked on that final icon, I expected that a door would open wide, saying,
"Congratulations on having completed the first segment of "Beginning Arabic". In our next segment, we will continue with numbers. Using the fingers of both hands, even savages can count to ten and, using their toes, perhaps even to twenty, But Arabs are deeply into numbers: they introduced that mind-boggling idea of zifr to the West—without which, the West would be nowhere close to where it is now. So we will now learn how to construct the rest of the numbers. And, speaking about numbers: we will learn about singular, dual, and plural. And In the context of that, we will introduce comparisons: comparative and superlative (yes, I realize, you have only one of those—but, considering, one is enough: whomever you compare him to, God is always greater), and diminutives. And logically, we will discuss money. And, counting time, we will learn about dates—as well as past, present, and future. We also must learn how to use a dictionary—Arabic/English—so we need to learn about roots of verbs, and how all words are derived from these roots—no, nor "T-shirt" and not "Cee Dee", but roots like H-M-D, which make hamd, Hamid, Muhammad, Mahmood, etc. etc. etc.
But instead of being greeted by that bright open door, I fell through a trapdoor into a sewer. This is all there is? If that were the case, however, it would not even have been worth to start. So what are you planning to do about it?
And since I do not know how to contact you, I am using the only route I do know of, and will stick this into the first comment hole that opens. Peace be upon you.
EvemarieMo if you finished the Arabic tree go and do English for Arabic speakers you will learn all what you mention... but remember that his course is free! So take as much as you can!
"shu" is a very Levantine, colloquial word. Even in Jordan "aysh" is used instead of "shu". However, in a more formal Arabic, "ma ismuka" is more common (think Egyptian or Saudi). "Ma ismuka" would never be used in an informal setting in Lebanon for instance, it would always be "shu ism-ak/ik".
Thanks -- this has been bothering, having been taught by iraquis. They never said ma ismuka
It's different slangs while the meaning is the same. Shu smak it's for Iraqi slang. In Arabic literature language it should be ما هو اسمك الكريم if i remember it correctly. This course without the grammar is incomplete.
You don't know if you are talking to a boy or girl -- ismuk implies either one. The "k" means "you" here. Ma ismuka is what is your (masculine) name. Ma ismuki is what is your (feminine) name. Ma ismuk is proper Arabic while ma ismak or ma ismik are not, grammatically.
I just cannot get this to work. The first letter of ٱسْمَك displays as an empty box in my system. It should be something like اسْمَك, but duolingo won't accept that: there must be some diacritical mark on it, but I can't find out what it is, because all I see is an empty box. What should it be? And how do I enter it? (This is one of the times in which duolingo seems to be the most infuriating program that I have ever used, and I've used a lot of remarkably infuriating programs. DUOLINGO ADMINISTRATORS, ARE YOU LISTENING?)
Here it is ٱ just copy and past it, independently if it looks like a box. Or paste it directly in the window of Duo when you have to use it!
It just happened again. I have serious problems with my laptop not showing the first character in ٱسْمَك . Because it won't show it, I don't know which character it is. This is probably font related, so one way for me to solve it would be if someone has a computer which can display it, and could then tell me which font they were using.
You really need to remove the requirement for this funky accent over the alif. it's effectively a bug here.
I now know what the "funky accent" is: it's alif waslah. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_diacritics#Alif_waslah
People seem generally to have a lot of problems rendering Arabic diacritics correctly: see, for example, https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/how-to-type-numerals-diacritical-marks-special-letters-for-transliteration.73383/page-2
It would be a great help if the Duolingo people would give us some help and/or recommendations about getting this right.
We know what it is--we have heard its name before and, yes, it's pretty. But it's pedantics and complete overkill to require it as an answer in this course. What % of people completing this course are doing so as preparation for a classical Arabic exam? Close to zero? How many want to learn how to speak, write and read Arabic? 100%?
Requirements like this--and indeed discussions like this in the comments--feel to me like people trying to seem oh so super smart. Just remove these extraneous details from the course.