"There is your wife with a man behind the restaurant."
Translation:خَلْف اَلْمَطْعَم زَوْجَتَك مَعَ رَجُل.
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Nor in English! Also the English sentence is very awkward in my opinion as a native speaker. 'Your wife is behind the restaurant with a man' makes more sense, unless you are pointing straight at her when you say it.
Think of the context in which the speaker is saying this. If the speaker is talking about what he/she sees in a picture pointing at the wife then it would make sense both in Arabic and English.
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❤❤❤❤❤❤, Duolingo! You ruined what could have been the funniest prompt in the Arabic course by your awkward phrasing! Can't you do anything right? Ya Allah!
From a comment on another sentence I understood that you could use it here, but it is optional. If you leave it out then "there is" is implicit.
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You actually can't use it here, because "your wife" is definite, and you'd use هناك with an indefinite. It's precisely why it also sounds weird in English to say "there is your wife," unless you're actually presenting her.
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Thank you, tsuj1g1r1. I had thought that Duolingo was inconsistent in sometimes insisting on "hunaak" where there already was an adverbial of place. But perhaps the complement was indefinite. I must look out for that when/if I come across it again.
This sentence should probably be removed. I understand they want to add crazy sentences to make people conjugate verbs and nouns, but if you said something like this in an Arab country you would have problems.
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I see that the pietist fearmongering has done a great job spreading its poison all over the world. My view on this is that Arabs are not a homogeneous block of obedient robots that think and act according to the diktats of their weird governments. Far from it, they're just people, and they are as diverse as any other people in the world. Their language is rich and can be funny, mischievous or even obscene, as needed, like any other language. And even though some of them may take offense if they hear this sentence, most others will find it funny. If we start censoring our learning of this language out of fear that pietists and dogmstists may be offended, we will actually contribute to their work, which is the systematic elimination of diversity and dissent. And we will be impoverishing and limiting this rich and colorful language. So let's keep the funny (or even mildly mischievous) sentences, please. And pay no attention to fearmongers.
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And what a pleasure to see the correct"homogeneous" instead of the commonly seen "homogenous", as well as "mischievous" and not the lunatic "mischievious". Thank you, P.ep.e.
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Yes, but people don't actually learn Duolingo sentences by heart to use them verbatim in conversation. I'm pretty sure very few people are going to feel compelled to go around telling Arabs their wives are cheating on them after doing this exercise.
ha, ha! on that note, it is kinda exciting TO BE LEARNING Arabic!!! I just thought earlier in this lesson, no way would I have been able to say "I love my lion but I do not love her lion," when I was actually studying Arabic in college!!! Yes, the word bank helps a lot, but I get the sentences a lot even without them. It is exciting to me!!! (but they still need to make MANY improvements in this course...the #1 being to make it so one can actually read the font. WAY too tiny!!! Have to guess way too often because I can't actually see it! Fortunately, the process of elimination does help a lot with the guessing.)
You can simultaneously press "CTRL" and "+" on your keyboard (if using a computer) to zoom in.
Yet, in addition to your comment about increasing the font size, I would also suggest that Duo increase the tree length (which I find too short, at least when comparing with the trees from other languages)....
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If you get the Wudooh extension from https://github.com/basshelal/Wudooh , you can adjust the size of the font to be readable. The extension works on Chrome or on any Chrome-based browser.
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PhillipJos11, you can't conjugate nouns, only verbs. You decline nouns. Except that Duolingo doesn't.
The further you go from Indo-European languages, the more surprising stuff gets. Defining "conjugate" as marking either tense/aspect or person, Wolof conjugates pronouns, Japanese conjugates adjectives, Scots & Irish Gaelic conjugate prepositions, and in certain contexts, Nootka/Nuuchahnulth does indeed conjugate nouns. It might be less common in world languages, but it happens.
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Well, thank you for this cold shower, Ben349943. Having only previously come across indoeuropean languages, I spoke with those blinkers on. I'm glad to have my horizons expanded. It's like taking a mind-bending pill. Does you good.
Yes, you're right, Christoph55835! Thanks. And, I just want to add the note: if we want to give the complete Harakaat, the last phrase is
مَعَ رَجُلٍ.
"ma3a rajul(in)." ie. in the genitive case, in Formal Standard.
(Update: I got TWO downvotes without any reason for a valid comment. But, if you know something wrong in my comment, please share your knowledge. Thanks in advance)
In the Egyptian dialect, this would be: مراتك مع حد ورا المطعم And in the Sudanese dialect, it would be: مرتك مع زول بِورا المطعم The only two words similar to MSA are مع and المطعم.
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This one is flexible: I wrote زَوْجَتَك مَعَ رَجُل خَلْف اَلْمَطْعَم and it was accepted.
I came here to ask which is more natural in Arabic.
I think both are acceptable, it depends on the part you want to empasize. You put it in the END. Arabic natives — am I right?
i think they were very lenient with the answers! I had no idea how to say this with the word bank words, so I just put "your wife with a man behind the restaurant," and I got credit for it! Alhamdullallah!!
I agree, the Arabic seems awkward and the translation does not seem to adequately capture the Arabic. Something along the lines of هناك زوجتك مع رجل خلف المطعم would seem to better convey what is being said.
