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- "اَلْإيجار جَيِّد اَلْحَمْدُ …
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The religious meaning of alhamdulillah is all praise and all thanks is for Allah alone. Praise and thanks being two different things. You can thank someone for a favour done to you but not praise them, you can praise the good attributes of someone or something but not thank them. However alhamdulillah is a combination of both these things because ultimately, all praise and all thanks is for Allah alone. We praise the Creator not the creation. All thanks is due to Allah because everything happens by His will. That is why we also say alhamdulillah when something 'bad' happens to us because it happened by Allah's will and we do not know His plan for us. It could be that He has done us a massive favour without us realising it yet. So say alhamdulillah often!
To me alhamdulillah on "bad" things is not a focus on the will off Allah (Insha'Allah) but really praising and thanking Him that we are created with the means to overcome the obstacles that appear and that any "bad" thing is insignificant compared to Him.
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Is this only for Allah, or could Christians use this as well? (Eg. for Jesus, who we believe is God)
i am a Christian living in the Middle East and i use it alot. Allah is the Arabic word for God. The God being referred to is the God of Abraham. He's the same God. Allah is also used in native Arabic speaking Christian worship songs.
In Arabic the word for God is Allah. So that's what is used by the Christians too.
I agree with you completely. I've read all the comments. And it seems that this sentence has created a big caos here. Muslims like me use "alhamdulillah" to praise the one and only "Allah". So "Allah" should be an option here. We all are using Duolingo to learn Arabi. But this course isn't that good. I still haven't learnt to say how are you, I'm fine, what's your name, my name is..... etc. And these sentences might be offensive sometimes for Muslims. So this sentence should be removed.
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Is "Praise be to God" an expression used in the daily life, such as in the above sentence ?
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Thank God, is not used often in English, only by religious people or some irish people.
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And how!
From what I understand, casual spoken conversations are going to be full of إنشاءالله and الحمد لله, though not necessarily as a prayer so much as an exclamation of thankfulness or hope.
"Thank God" should also be accepted because it's an equivalent expression (not a literal translation), but without an "s" at the end of "thank". The English expression is "thank God", where "thank" is in the imperative mood. You're telling people to thank God, you're not talking to God directly and saying "thanks!" (3rd person singular).
Please report "The rent is good, thank God." as a correct answer using the "Report" button next time :-)
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I do not believe that "thank god" is in the imperative mood. It's a set phrase to express gladness, or relief , no sense of telling anyone to offer thanks.
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I think you're right--a lot of traditional expressions get shortened to a couple key words or a single word of its own--sometimes to the extent that the "full" version sounds awkwardly old-fashioned.
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Be [it the] cause = because
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Al[though] it [may] be = albeit
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N[ot] ever = never
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[You act] as if [that were the case!] = As if!
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[I] thank you / Thanks [be to you] = Thank you!/Thanks!
So, similar to the last one, "I thank God" drops the "I" and becomes "thank God."
For anyone trying to learn to type as well, I figured out "لله" is a ligature you get when you have "ل+ل+ه"
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Dear poptropica5, thank you! I'm just beginning to use the Arabic keyboard - with a printout of it stuck to my wall in front of me, so that I learn to touch-type. And it felt magic when "لله" appeared just as you said. But what's that grave harakat above the little double-u that doubles the second L? And I have another problem: I'm using the Word keyboard, on my computer, and it doesn't seem to have the letter dhaa! Do you have that difficulty? Is it a fault of Word, I wonder, or is dhaa hiding somewhere? I'd greatly appreciate your help.
Do you mean ذ ? If so, it is to the left of the numbers under the 'esc' button :)
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Oh my dear friend Hariann! Thank you thank you! What a difference to my life. It was quite a fly in the ointment, not to have that letter. xx
Haha I don't know why it's in such a strange place! Good luck with your learning
God is actually ilah إله. Allah الله as is different as previously explained by another user, so if i type "praise be to Allaah" rather than "god", I feel should be accepted.
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That's "god" with a miniscule G. The Abrahamaic God is called "الله" in Arabic. But yeah, "praise be to Allah" should be a valid option as well.
Shouldn't "All praise to God" be also accepted? Already reported but I do want to know for sure
In German we use regularly "Gott sei Dank" (Thank God) or "gottlob" (literally praise God, but used like an adverb) in the meaning of fortunately. But the expressions have lost every religious connotation. How is that in Arab with اَلْحَمْدُ لِل? Can someone, who is not Muslim, use this expression?
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Yes--it's sort of like how someone sneezes and English-speakers automatically respond with "God bless you" without really thinking about any connotations.
Though if you're in an Arabic country, you definitely shouldn't bring up being atheist or agnostic.
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People dont say "God bless you" nowadays, they say "bless you".... and forget that it came from a religious time.
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That is true, certainly for a sneeze. But if they want to say it fervently, like instead of, or in addition to, a heartfelt "thank you", they might say the full "god bless you".
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I think bless you is used a lot by atheists and non atheists a like but ive only heard people who are religious (or had some sort of religious upbringing ) say god bless you... these days i only hear "thank you very much" for a heart felt thank you.
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My understanding is that A: you probably should avoid bringing up being atheist or agnostic in most countries where Arabic is the official state language, but B: it's more like "god bless you" when someone sneezes, or a muttered "oh thank god!" to express relief or "oh my god!" to express shock--a particularly adamant atheist might try to find ways to avoid it, but most people would just say it out of habit without really intending any religious aspect.
For my safety I have to avoid most Arab countries anyway. I intend to use Arabic mostly here in my city where we have a lot of Arabic immigrants ☺️ thanks for the info
Actually as a Christian I would never say 'Oh my God' either, unless using it in a religious context.
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But since atheists say things like "thank god" without thereby declaring their belief in any god, why shouldn't they say the equivalent in Arabic?
I agree with Allard88 and won't travel to Arabic countries that much because of reasons of conscience. I am not even an agnotistic, I am atheist and I do not like to pretend to participate in religion. But because of this, I also don't pepper my speech with "thank god", "bless you" or whatever...
"all praise" should be accepted as this is the understood meaning in arabic because of the definite article ال
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"Fortunately" should be an acceptable translation, if not the primary one, for "Al7amdu lillaah," given that it doesn't carry the religious connotation "praise be to God" carries in English.
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Really? I took it as what the landlord might say straight after counting what they received, as acknowledgement that it was the correct amount.
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Meh... if somebody said "the rent is good" in English, what you said is the first thing that would spring to my mind, but with the Arabic, "it is a reasonable amount of money" is more probable. الإيجار كامل "Rent is complete" is how I would express the former idea, or something to that effect anyway.
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Could somebody please explain how works? I understand that the first part اَلْحَمْدُ means "praise", and we've learned that إلى means "to", and الله means Allah, but what are the letters in لِله ? Could someone please deconstruct it for me? I can't work out what letters it's made of. Thank you.
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The first two letters of الله are the same الـ you see in "the". The original word for a (polytheistic) god was إلٰه 'ilahu; 'allah was a contraction of الإلٰهal-'ilahu, meaning "The God"--i.e., emphasizing this was The One And Only God, not just a minor deity; the triconsonantal root of الإلٰه was ء-ل-ه, though the hamza was a weak sound that eventually got left out between the laams.
When al الـ is prefixed by li لِـ, ("to"; "for"; belonging to"), you write two laams in a row (للـ) instead of laam-alif-laam (لال*).
So, "to God" is li (لِ) + [a]llah (لّٰه) =lillah (لِله).
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اَلْحَمْدُ لِ انت I hope you might correct my attempt at saying "praise be to you", AnUnicorn. Actually the omission of harakat is quite handy, isn't it, if you don't know if you're talking to a masculine or a feminine being! I hugely appreciate your detailed explanation. One other thing: could you tell me if this "to" (لِ) is anything to do with the "to" Duolingo has taught us so far, (إلى)? Or is the latter just to indicate physical direction, while your shorter version denotes an indirect object, like the dative case?
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What you were trying to say was الحمد لك. In dialect, لـ is used for both إلى and لـ, but in MSA, لـ generally translates to "for" and إلى to "to." So literally, "praise is for God." And you're right that an indirect object can often be found after لـ as well.
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For some reason I've only come across your post a month after you wrote it, tsuj1g1r1. Many thanks for correcting my clumsy attempt at الحمد لك. But I can't quite decompose لك. I see that the final ك indicates "you", and the first ل indicates for/to. But what is the second ل doing? Looking forward to your response.
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Which second ل? If you mean لله, adding لـ to the beginning of the word removes the alif in the definite article, so لالله becomes لله.
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No, I meant the second L in لك of الحمد لك. But I see now that there aren't two L's. I stupidly took the upright of ك for an ل. Or else my vision was blurred. Even so, I have a problem. I understand that لك means "to/for/ you". And Google Translate pronounces it as "lak". But how is it broken down? It's the preposition "li" followed by K? So presumably it gets differentiated for gender? Lak and Lik? Or do the a/i follow the K? How does it work?
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Huh! You know, I never noticed this before in my life, but li- does indeed get an irregular vowel change before pronouns, and I can't think of any other preposition that does (Although the -aa at the end of على and إلى become -y before pronouns, as their spelling indicates). It's li- before nouns, but la- before pronouns. So "laka" for the masculine you, and "laki" for the feminine you. In Standard Arabic, short vowels aren't pronounced in pausa (before silence), so they both become "lak," but in the more common dialect-influenced pronunciation that everybody is disapproving of in the comments here, you'd say "lak" to a man and "lakii" to a woman, with a long vowel, and this will keep them separate.
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I will try to use praise be to god io thank god just to see people freeze and ask wtf did you just say?
Keeping all other syntaxes same, why did it reject when I said "the God" instead of only "God"... ??
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Hahaha. Because "the God" implies there are more than one. It turns "God" into a common noun, a countable one. If you can use the definite article, it means you can use the indefinite one too. Whereas, article-less, "God" is a name, and therefore refers to one single entity.
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Why when I type in the exact same thing as the supposedly correct answer, it marks it wrong?
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Sometimes, when people say that, and write out their answer for us to see, someone notices a tiny typo...
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Again i dont think a literal translation help english speakers understand... they should've had the translation as "thank goodness"....if you were to use the phrase here in most english speaking countries they would think you are a religious fanatic....!
The rent is good .praise be to god ..i did 3 times but just coming in correct
