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- "أَيْن جورْج يا بوب؟"
43 Comments
The comma is there. Some people don't write it when translating the Arabic to English in this question, but that's their decision. If you scroll up, you see the title of this conversation is:
x"أَيْن جورْج يا بوب؟ " – Translation: Where is George, Bob?
Maybe this could be edited to "Bob, where is George?" "يا بوب اين جورج؟" Which would be less confusing?
Are you sure this is an idiomatic way to say this in Arabic? Or would it sound like Yoda speaking?
333
esdrujula69,
Yes it can. We can write "yaa Buub", in the beginning of the sentence so in this way we call the person who we want to ask first.
I hear a vowel on the end of some words when in a sentence but not when pronounced by itself? Is there some rule to this such as when a word ends in a consonant a vowel is "understood" when followed by another consonant. For example in this fraise I hear "Ayn(a) George ya Bob". Notice the "a" I hear after Ayn. Some help please
- 333
Bobby 220586,
The full diacritics for the "where" English word in Arabic is 2aina أَيْنَ. It's how the word should be pronounced, ie. with "a".
In this "2aina" matter, the sound is not affected by whether the consonant at the next word follows the 2aina or not. "2aina" (means where) is always be "2aina" in every case.
Nb: I notice that some ending sounds in Duolingo are audio glitches/errors. But, in the "2aina" case, it's correct!
Intonation suggests it's a statement, not a question (which seems to be what was intended), and this makes the two names in a row really confusing
Again another issue with pronunciation, this time with the name Bob. It sounds to me that the reader pronounces it closer to Pop rather than Bob, which is confusing, since the sound associated with the letter 'p' does not even exist in the formal Arabic language.
In English (and other Germanic languages) the difference between P and B is more in the aspiration than in voicedness. P is aspirated and unvoiced, B is voiced and unaspirated. If you say "panana" with an unaspirated /p/, a native English speaker will just hear "banana", because there's an unaspirated b-like sound in the beginning, just as they are expecting. In most languages, neither P or B is aspirated, and it's only the voicedness that counts. Now, if the Arabic pronounciation has a slightly aspirated /b/, then it might indeed sound like /p/ to an English speaker's ear. To my ear she clearly says /buub/, and I cannot imagine how it might sound like /puup/ or /poop/ to someone. But then again, my native tongue isn't English, Germanic or even Indo-European, so for me the P and B are defined very differently to how your mind defines them.
Aren't P and B the same thing in Arabic? Maybe it's pronounced right in between the two.
- 333
awelottta,
In Arabic faSiHa, there is no P sound. The ب is pronounced as it's, ie. with all its unique characteristics.
Nb: each Arabic letter has originally its unique characteristics related to its sound. However, some people (their tongues) change because of the influence from foreigners. Perhaps, they adopt P, V, and other letter sounds.
- 333
OpMax1, dakkus2,
If we follow how the standard ruling of Arabic letters should be spelled, the sound should be: "buub".
That would require the Arabic version to have a different phrasing as well.
I find the "Where is George, Bob" completely unambiguous. If this is a typical word order for asking Bob about George's whereabouts, then of course we should learn to understand it that way. Would be plenty fantastic if the Arabic phrase had a comma like the English one, but if Arabic typically doesn't use a comma in that place, then that's what we must learn to read.
- 333
Hazelit,
The full Harakaat for أَيْن is: 2aina أَيْنَ means: "where". So, the "a" that you've heard is a part of the أَيْن word and it's the sound that should be heard.
The English phrase has the question mark and a comma. The English phrase is: "Where is George, Bob?". There's a comma after "George" and a question mark after "Bob".
Googling for it, it seems that in Arabic the use of comma is more voluntary than in English. However, the information I could find about this in English was very sparse. Clicking random links in Arabic Wikipedia, I can find articles that have very few commas at all.
If Arabic often ignores commas, meaning that a person reading Arabic is supposed to understand the phrase's meaning without commas as well, then it's correct to not show them in the Arabic sentence. If we need to learn to interpret "أَيْن جورْج يا بوب؟"correctly as "Where is George, Bob?", then this is a way we can learn it.
Los signos de puntuación son necesarios para una mejor comprensión. La pregunta: "where is George Bob" no se entiende sin la coma y el signo de interrogación. Where is George, Bob❓
- 176
What would you write in arabic to make this say where are george and bob rather than asking bob where george is?
As it should be. "Bob, where is George?" is the same thing as "Where is George, Bob?". English allows for both word orders, so both should be accepted.
Really confusing. You need a coma because "George Bob" is not a proper name
