"Seth is Lebanese American."
Translation:سيث أَمريكِيّ لُبنانِيّ.
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So, when hyphenating traits (such as nationality), they're inverted compared to English?
Yeah, and not only that, you can think of all Arabic adjectives as having a "mirror image" order from English. The pattern is that the adjective closest to the noun in English is the one closest to the noun in Arabic, and likewise the adjective furthest from the noun in English is the one furthest from the noun in Arabic.
1285
But, that's not what is happening here. Here, "Lebanese" is closest to the noun "Seth" in English but In Arabic, "American" is closest to the noun "Seth". So, is it "mirror image" or "closest to the noun"? I'm still trying to figure this out.
Update: I learned from a contributor on another thread that in a sentence like this, "Lebanese" is acting as an adjective modifying the noun "American". This finally made sense to me. In English, adjectives come before the nouns they modify but, in Arabic, adjectives come after the nouns they modify. This, it seems, is not the case when there are two adjectives together. Then the "mirror image" example seems to come into play.
It seems so far, that additional adjectives come after the main describing adjective of the subject. For example: "I am a good doctor" becomes "I am doctor good".
Yes, you're right. In English we have prepositions that modify nouns. In other languages, like Arabic, and sometimes Spanish, there are post-positions. They serve the same purpose as prepositions, but they come after the noun.
I also get that sometimes. It always says I spell American wrongbin Arabic and when I compare to their cirrection I don't see a difference...
