"Your son is smart, George."

Translation: اِبْنَك ذَكِيّ يا جورْج.

[ryagami97]

shouldn't it be اِبْنُكَ?

[Hsn626796]

If you're speaking MSA, YES

If you're speaking Egyptian, no

In lebanese, we say : إبنَك زَكي ( not ذكي )

[Christoph55835]

Thanks. So what are they trying to teach here? Obviously not Egyptian. Obviously not Lebanese. So if it's supposed to be MSA they have to use correct Harakat. Also, there is nothing more confusing than teaching a horrible mix of MSA and random dialects. It's either one thing or the other (just my personal opinion).

[_FiX_]

It is a new language of sorts that doesn't exist but isn't Arabic - and it really sounds painful...

[Away54]

I feel the same now, it hurts. Other courses don't take much dialects but only in Arabic.

[Christoph55835]

I agree. The Arabic sentences are unfortunately still full of wrong Harakat.

[TarekHachem]

This is correct. It should be ابنكَ, while the vowel on the ن will change according to the case of the word
I guess to avoid the confusion due to the cases, duo decided to go for the colloquial form
I am surprised they are doing so as I have seen that they respect cases in other languages like Russian, where they focus a lot on the cases, and they don’t mix the vowels at the end for كَ or كِ, like in the Hebrew course
Very disappointing, and the worse is that no Mod has commented

[mitch.vand]

What's the difference between اِبنَك and ابنَك?

[Away54]

Both are the same.

The original version will be without any Harakaat like this: ابنك or إبنك. Furthermore, the oldest version is without any dot and Harakaat. (But, I am so sorry I have no keyboard to give you an example for Arabic without any dot).

[AzIgaziZsoozsy]

I think I have a new theory and I would really appreciate confirmation or denial of people who speak Arabic and understand the logic of Duolingo as well:

Is it possible that the one without the [i] sound sign is meant to be not in the beginning of a sentence, but after words only?

This theory popped up in my head just now, after have met an other problem in another exercise where it was after the word هو and there it was without, and it even sounded together with the word before [hu abnik] or [hu abnak] (I don't remember anymore the ending, the point is the first sound of the word ابنك that has just changed just because of the word هو

[Away54]

AzlgaziZsoozsy:

(I hope I have understood your question correctly).

It's something like when we recite basmala

بِسْم الله

Bismillaah

وأصله : بِإِسم الله.

Originally, it's bi-2ismillaah.

Here the (i) sound is omitted so we spell it as "bismillaah".

Another example taken from Quran 61:6:

و إذ قال عيسى ابن مريم...

wa idh qaala 3isaabnu maryama ... (Quran 61:6)

Here the (i) sound in 2idh is still existed but the (i) sound in 2ibnu maryam is omitted.

So, by applying this to "huwa 2ibnuka", then the sound will be like "huwabnuka".

So, ... in short, omitting the (i) sound or not is based on how Arabic speakers speak. But, I think your theory can be applied in some cases (not all).

[Max187570]

I was wondering the same thing

[AzIgaziZsoozsy]

Me too I came here because of this question and I am not totally sure that the answer above is totally right.

[lucaszchu]

I am learning Arabic by myself, the harakat here is different from those in textbooks, Duolingo got me so confused.
In MSA it should be ibnuka and -a can be dropped in everyday speech.
I never saw ibnak, only here in Duolingo, I have been struggling with this for days, at first I thought it might be another colloqual MSA form, but some Arab friends say it is not correct, it is painfully confusing!

[Away54]

lucaszchu:

You're correct! It should be ibnuka as George is male. If it's female, the word will be ibnuki. Whilst, ibnak is taken from slang/dialect. DL team try to mix the standard grammar and some slangs as they want to omit all endings. They thought that endings make more difficult to learn Arabic.

Please see some comments above. Some members have tried to correct the words.

[Slitinsky]

So ibnuk is msa and in most dialects ibnek/ibnik?

[josephvitti]

I think that's right, but I've also been very confused about this!

[Away54]

Slitinsky, jvitti624:

Yes, you're correct 100%

[MdImamHasan]

Really!
The old arabic scripture didnt even have the dots?
Then how did they differ 'Qaaf' and 'Kaaf'? Both are like the same without nuktahs (dots)

[SimranChohan]

Do explain the difference between words of almost same pronunciation.that is necessary to understand a particular language.repeating the same thing again and again is not helping.it will be better make lessons on rule of speaking language in every language course.And also teach the alphabet at the beginning of lesson not in between.

[AyoubNiyaz]

Yes I totally agree. They need to explain the lessons rather than just accept or reject perfectly reasonable and seemingly identical answers/options

[suleymanrecep]

It must be ابنُك

[RachaelIes]

I find the pronunciation to be inconsistent, at best. And, the grammatical structure often seems wrong. But, it has given me practice with reading (phonetics) and theoretically increased my vocabulary. All the courses I've tried ended up being a mix of MSA and various dialects, unfortunately. This might be the best it gets.

[KMG1234567890]

This might be addressed already but I clearly do not understand enough to have picked this up.
The DL suggested words which I followed. (I cannot reproduce the words given.)

However, "another correct solution" is
اِبْنَك ذَكِيّ يا جورْج

I cannot spot the difference. Please can someone explain.
Thank you

[chwakr]

This is not right! if the language we are learning here is Arabic which suggests that it is the standard form ( MSA ) there shouldn't be these Harakat, the people in charge of the content should make it clear either we're learning Egyptian or Standard Arabic here not some sort of hybrid nonsense!