"هٰذا حَمّام واسِع."

Translation: This is a spacious bathroom.

[fehrerdef]

If it were "This bathroom is spacious", would "bathroom" need a definite article?

[CarstenLu]

Yes, that would be هذا الحمّام واسع.

[OmerMallhi]

Thanks for the explanation. Couldn't wrap my head around it.

[aamirghanchi]

"This bathroom is spacious" was not accepted.

[isicman]

Why not this is a spacious hammam ? That word is also used in English

[IdaDayy]

Could someone please help me understand how/when the vowel placed on top of ه in هذا is used? I can't find it among the Arabic letters on my phone, I'll call it a "mini alif" for now. What is it caled (so I can search for some more info)? What is the difference between using the"mini alif' compared to alif ا. They are both long "aa" (while fatha َ is "a")? Thanks for helping a beginner out!

[Argyle12]

It is called "dagger alif", and it is used to show that the pronunciation is long "aa", even though alif is not written. There are only a few words of this kind, and one has to memorize them. The Wikipedia article on "dagger alif" will help.

[Susan569895]

Have we been taught hatha? هذا? I got caught out with this one... i dont really understand the explanations given above but will keep practising it and eventually ill get it!

[sue101]

I had: This bathroom is spacious. How would this be written?

[fehrerdef]

This question has already been answered. See below.

[Tisha653515]

How come this bathroom is spacious wrong??

[anastime]

In Arabic, the words end with 7arakat ( Move) not sokon ( silent sound) ,
7amam ( on) Was3 (on)
this is one of the things that make the language beautiful.

[kara5712800]

İ agree, especially the course should be teaching Fusha Arabic "MSA"..

[Suzan502737]

How do we know where to put is?

[Argyle12]

The first step is to recognize that the word "this" is a trap for the unwary. It could be used as a pronoun, the way one uses "he", "she", or "one". But it could also be used as a determiner, as in "this house". The second step is to understand idafah constructions; there is an article about "idafah" in Wikipedia. To use "this" as a determiner in Arabic requires an idafah construction, which implies that the following noun has to have the definite article "al-". There is no "al-" in the example, so the "this" must be a pronoun, not a determiner. The third step is to diagram the sentence with all that information: [this] [bathroom] [spacious] becomes [this] [bathroom [spacious]] simply because it cannot possibly be [this bathroom] [spacious], because of the missing "al-". So the sentence is an equational sentence with the verb "to be" missing in the middle: [this] [is] [bathroom [spacious]]. And in idiomatic English, that is "This is a spacious bathroom."