"هُناك لاب توب وَمِفْتاح في شَنْطَتَك يا سام."
Translation:There is a laptop and a key in your bag, Sam.
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"there is" should refer only to one item. More than one should be introduced by "there are".
Feel free to correct me—in colloquial usage, we often use “there is” even for multiple objects wherein each are completely unrelated to each other. Our sentence would best fit in that situation. We only use “there are” if there are multiple quantities of an object (e.g. “There are laptops and a key in your bag, Sam.”)
The use of “there is” likely stemmed as a simplification of the more verbose sentence of “There is a laptop and there is a key in your bag, Sam.” The subsequent term is omitted in conversations, thus leading back to our sentence.
That is my food for thought regarding descriptive language.
I think this kind of grammatical laxness is acceptable in spoken English but not in written English
656
Shouldn't laptop be one word, ie لابتوب? At least سي دي has the excuse of being an initialism abd similarly تي شيرت contains an initial
The verb might be "is" in Arabic, but the only grammatical verb in English is "are"
- 769
In English "there is/are {one or more objects}" MUST use "are" if the word 'and' connects multiple objects! No such thing as "there is (two things)". Maybe in some sort of street slang, but not in English.