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- "I do not like the mountains."
"I do not like the mountains."
Translation:لا أُحِبّ اَلْجَبَل.
17 Comments
16
yes, it's very normal in arabic to use the singular noun in general statements, such as "to like something".
892
You got robbed of a lingot you could have spent on yayin, because he's wrong. Arabic uses the definite plural (or collective nouns when available) in general statements such as "to like something." I think he's confused because he thinks collective nouns are the same as the singular: the word دجاج isn't the singular; دجاجة is.
Ok. Thanks. Have a priceless lingot. Can this also mean "I like mountains"? I ask because some languages do "I like" statements with the definite article. For instance, me gustan las montañas, it's incorrect to omit las, whereas English can say "I like mountains" or "I like the mountains" to refer to mountains in general (the latter may refer to a specific mountain range).
892
I'm not sure I consider the prompt as it stands a good translation of "I don't like the mountains" anyway. In Arabic, you can only say أنا أحب الجبال, in the plural, and that can mean both "I like mountains" in general, and "I like the mountains," as in some specific mountains. The problem here is "the mountains" just refers to the environment of a mountainous area or whatever, not a group of mountains in the plural, and they decided to go for the singular in Arabic. I, as a native speaker, can't make up my mind whether we'd ever say "الجبل" for "the mountains" in Arabic or not. The plural still sounds better to my ears, although admittedly I've had little reason to talk about the mountains.