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- Topic: Arabic >
- "قِطَّتَك غَريبة يا جورْج."
23 Comments
881
Not necessarily. The word for cat, قطة, ends in the feminine ending as you can see–it is a feminine word. There is a masculine version of it, قط (qiTT), but you could still refer to a cat that you know is male using the feminine word if you don't need to be explicit about its sex, which I'd venture to say is most of the time. It's the other way around with dogs, the default word (كلب, kalb) is masculine and you can use it to refer to female dogs.
so can we say that cats in arabic are generally referred to using the feminine and dogs are masculine? Thanks for the detailed response. It supplies just what we are missing here in duolingoland.
I hear قِطَّتَك as qyTpatake (not as qiTTatak). Why is the "p" here?
There is no P in the Arabic language. You may be confusing it with Farsi, which looks like پ. Unless you were talking about the way she was talking, which is a very weird pronunciation.
- 278
Again the intrusive A: qiTatak (A) . Please will someone tell us if it's a fault of Duolingo vocals or a normal Arabic thing to do?
- 167
Earlier in the lessons it was already discussed that in some cases an invisible vowel letter is added, supposedly for a softer combination of words with an ending in a consonant letter.
- 278
Well, I didn't see that discussion. One doesn't read ALL the discussions for the exercises, does one? Anyway, thank you, Hadriel_Eyn, for mentioning this. At least now I know it's not a Duolingo fault, but a naturally occurring phenomenon in Arabic speech. This was corroborated for me by the transliteration into Arabic of "blouse", and the pronunciation /lapitop/ for "laptop". At least, I assume that last wasn't a fault in the Duolingo audio?
- 167
..for 2 months of studying Arabic - I read up to 80% of all discussions, just because I wouldn’t miss anything important, and I’m pretty sure that the version of the invisible vowel for connecting words (it makes the pronunciation more melodic, easier and faster) - one of the local moderators wrote, so yes, that last wasn't a mistake of Duo’s artificial voice.
- 278
You say, "it makes the pronunciation more melodic, easier and faster". These things are not objective facts. They vary from language to language. In English, for instance, the populace inserts what's called an "intrusive R" presumably because of an aversion to two vowels side by side between two words, so that for instance, "law of the land" sounds the same as "lore of the land". Generally, English speakers who are not linguists are unaware of this. I wonder if Arab speakers are aware of the additional vowels they pronounce. Concerning reading the discussions: it's often a waste of time because a lot of people ask questions, and it's obvious they haven't read the "tips" given for the lessons.
- 278
On the other hand, thank you for encouraging me to read the discussions. In future, I'll look at them more.
- 278
Would it begin " القِطَّة الغَريبة " ... but then I realise I don't know how to say "yours". Help please!
- 180
İt starts exactly as you have said And yours is لك (ل + ك) ... The whole sentence is القطة الغريبة (تكون) لك or القطة الغريبةملك لك ..
The prevalence of "weird" is ridiculous. Do the course designers really think that it's such an important word in Arabic that they keep emphasizing it?
- 66
Why is this not "Your weird cat"? In a previous thread it was said that arabic doesn't have the word "is"...?
