"قِطَّتَك غَريبة يا جورْج."
Translation:Your cat is weird, George.
32 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1558
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.
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.
- 949
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?
- 513
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.
- 949
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?
- 513
..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.
- 949
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.
- 949
On the other hand, thank you for encouraging me to read the discussions. In future, I'll look at them more.
- 1558
"Labitob" would be completely unnatural Arabic, but "laptop" isn't an actual Arabic word, so the text engine is having trouble parsing it correctly. Arabic has trouble with syllable-initial consonant clusters, but not two-consonant syllable-final ones, so words like "labtob," "warniish" ('varnish') or "direksiyoon" (as in a French-influenced pronunciation of the word 'direction,' in this case meaning 'steering wheel') do not prove difficult for an Arab to pronounce without an intrusive vowel. Now THREE consonants like in "sandawich" or "handeball" is a different matter.
But "qittatuka" is indeed pronounced "qittatuka"; nothing intrusive about the vowel here. The pronoun is actually -ka, but it becomes -k at the end of an utterance because Standard Arabic doesn't allow short vowels to end utterances.
You asked a year ago, so maybe you already know this though.
Oh, and yes, we are very much aware of the vowels we pronounce. The accent we're discussing here is of an Arab making zero effort to sound less Arab. It's like saying Germans call themselves "Chermans"; most don't. Likewise, most Arabs you encounter in the UK will probably sound less stereotypically Arab.
- 949
Would it begin " القِطَّة الغَريبة " ... but then I realise I don't know how to say "yours". Help please!
Why is this not "Your weird cat"? In a previous thread it was said that arabic doesn't have the word "is"...?
Can anyone tell me what the 3 diamond shaped characters are and how they affect pronunciation?
They are in groups of three and can be over or under a letter in a word. They are very small so look like dots unless you enlarge the type.
- 1558
They are like the dot on top of lowercase I's and J's in the Latin script, except Arabic uses them much more heavily and they are often the only difference between otherwise identical letters.
بـ = b تـ = t ثـ = th نـ = n يـ = y
