"مِن أَيْن أَنْتَ يا بوب؟"
Translation:Where are you from, Bob?
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This is automatically generated voice (text-to-speech system from Amazon, afaik)
I think, this "يا" means, that you directly talk to the Person. It's somehow like "Oh Bob", to adress Bob, but there is no need to translate it.
I hope, this helps and I hope that my explanation is correct.
You can’t translate it as “oh” either, there’s just no translation.
It's commonly translated like that and I can't imagine where it wouldn't fit. Do you have a counter-example in mind?
simply كيف الحال / إزيك يا بوب" You wouldn’t translate to “How are you oh Bob”.
It is translate to "Oh Bob, how are you?". But this is archaic so using 'Bob, how are you?' is more natural
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Where you say "there's no need to translate it", I'd say, "it mustn't/shouldn't be translated", because I think if you say "there's no need..." it suggest, "you can if you like", and that's not the case. "Oh Bob" would sound pretty weird.
Is that informal, though? I have been writing "you ->" in my notes to indicate it's directed to a person because it seems to be used when asking about others like "Where is Carrie from? -> Bob".
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No it's not informal. What you wrote is indeed correct. Removing it is done sometimes in spoken Arabic afaik but it's grammatically incorrect.
PS: A similar example is the French negation "ne ... pas" (like "don't do this" is "ne fais pas ça") where the "ne" is often omitted when speaking ("fais pas ça"). It's not proper French but it's how we speak in day to day life.
To mention person who u are talking to him or her for example am i right carrie? U are talking with carrie and u mention her
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Ah, so they've both got the letter ي , but the former is followed by Alif, so has the initial shape whereas the latter only has a fatha and therefore retains its independent shape? Thank you so much, fgotmyname. And I like your pen name. So I'll follow you. The "so" doesn't refer only to your name.
