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- "هٰذا الْأَكْل طَيِّب."
48 Comments
Someone kindly explain how to tell the difference between this translation and "this is good food."
Because in this sentence food is definite (as indicated by the ال). "this is good food" would be written the same but with food being indefinite (with out the ال).
This food is good : هذا الطّعامُ جيّدٌ
1 . أكل : "means "eating
طعام : "means "food
2 . جيّد : good
طيّب : kind
لذيذ : tasty
These are the procession main terms used
Even if in ßeta, this course is awful..
Very misleading even to me, a native Arabic speaker
Well, "اكل" is "food" in Egyptian. Also, "طيب" is widely used to describe food as "good/delicious". It is a disadvantage for sure that MSA and dialects are being mixed up. However, this course has way bigger problems than that.
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I have mixed feelings about the course mixing together MSA and elements of dialects (or including influences from dialects). Some approximation of an ideal pure and strict MSA could be less confusing for learners, but in the real world it seems like all or nearly all speakers and writers trying to do MSA switch "registers" rather frequently.
Spanish DL also mixes Castellano (Spanish from Spain) and español from Latin America. Global languages such as Arabic and Spanish have tough decisions to make. Pimsleur language programs separate the various dialects. As a complete beginner to Arabic, I am interested in learning the alphabet, some vocabulary, and some basics about syntax. I think going beyond MSA into some dialects can be frustrating at times but also is a good decision similar to the way DL Spanish does it. It introduces people to the richness of these languages. But certainly down the road, having a separate course on the various types of Arabic and Spanish would be ideal, as Pimsleur does it. I'm grateful that there's a place to start & enjoy hearing from native speakers and advanced learners. I really appreciate YousefHawash's comment, for instance, about Egyptian use of "اكل" and "طيب". That vocab is very close to Hebrew (אֹכֶל and טוב).
I wish they would stick to MSA. If the argument for mixing in a dialect is making the learned Arabic available for practical use, who decides which dialect? Who knows which dialect they will face?
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Ibraahiim13 -- Good question, challenging question -- I tried to address similar concerns in a post I made about a year ago in this thread -- some related stuff has occurred to me since then -- the dialects seem to "bleed into each other" somewhat -- for instance numerous Levantine and Egyptian expat workers have long gone to the petro-rich Gulf monarchies and used their native dialects there as well as picked up proficiency in Gulf dialects -- and e.g. 100's of thousands of Iraqi refugees lived in Jordan & Syria for yrs after 2003 and had heavy linguistic interaction with the natives there -- Arabs everywhere listen to song lyrics in multiple Arabic dialects other than their own (Egyptian, Levantine, NW African e.g. Cheb Khaled, etc.) as well as lyrics in الفصحى (classical Arabic) e.g. "Li Beirut" by Fairuz, and they can work out the meanings to varying degrees -- similarly with movies and television -- also, different dialects have different commonalities with and divergences from MSA and classical Arabic, in pronunciation, verb conjugation morphology, vocabulary, etc. -- and I'm not sure there's a widely agreed upon specification of what exactly is MSA -- if I were working on this course as a contributor, I would feel very challenged by the difficulty of addressing all that -- 06 Sep 2020 --
Sorry but I'm struggling to understand your claim and others'. Which colloquial dialect words are being mixed with the so-called standard dialect?
I'm trying to type instead of using the word bank in order to work on my spelling. I usually don't type the vowels, and I realize it is not a vowel per say, but does anyone know how to type "هذا" correctly with the vertical line after the "ه". I typed what I have in the quotation marks, but the program kept marking it incorrect.
I experienced the same problem. I don't usually type the vowels either (although now and then I add them, just to stay in practice). But on my iMac, using the Arabic keyboard, I'm able to type the alif-dagger over the ه by typing [option] + [alif] (h) immediately after the ه. On a computer running Windows, though, I don't know.
Good find! Sadly I am using Arabic - QWERTY on OSX, which doesn't appear to have this option. Still, I can switch when necessary.
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I have the same problem. My solution is; i keep the "هٰ" in a text file, copy it from there and paste it here when needed. I would appreciate if someone show me how to type it directly in the keyboard though.
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Just report your answer as "My answer should be accepted".
هذا اَلْأَكْل طَيَّب -> reported 2020-04-16
Can someone please explain to me the difference between "Tayib" and "Jayid"?
They both mean "good" generally, but the former is more likely to be used with the meaning "tastes good".
Also, 'jayid' is not really used in speech. It's a classical Arabic word used in Modern Standard Arabic, the written standard. In the spoken language, you are more likely to hear things like kuweyis, zein, Tayyib, depending on the country or region you find yourself in.
Why is it written as 'al akal' (the food) and not just 'akal' (food)? There is no 'the' before food only 'this' Please answer
Like some other languages (Italian is one, I believe), 'this', 'that' or 'these' as a demonstrative adjective requires the inclusion of the word 'the'. So, when you say "This man" in English, the equivalent Arabic expression requires you to include the definite article, which would be like saying "this the man" in English.
There's no perfect logic behind this, but it makes perfect sense within the logic of the specific language. So you just have to learn to think that way.
hadha al-rajal = this man
whereas
hadha -- rajal = This is a man.
If part of this needs further explanation, just let us know and someone will jump in and try to clear up any further misunderstandings. There are a lot of knowledgeable people on this thread.
The food being referred to here is definite (i.e. known) so requires "al".
In English, the use of "this" (or "that") implies the food is definite, so it is not required.
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I think Edrees might just not be familiar with the common usage of calling tasty food "good" in English. You can use "tasty" if you want as well, although it doesn't really capture the whole nuance of "wholesome" and "fragrant" that the Arabic word offers. Even if somebody thought Cheetos were tasty, they would never call them طيب. Maybe "hearty" is the best English translation? Although my dictionary says it means "nourishing" rather than "tasty." :/
To say "this food is tasty," I'd personally just translate it to "this food has delicious taste" = هذا الطعام طعمه لذيذ, and then you could do away with "has taste" if you really wanted to translate the more superlative "delicious."
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Versions with هاذا and هذا (i.e. replacing the dagger alif with the standard alif or no alif at all) continue to not be accepted as translations. I have reported both for this lesson and will continue to do so whenever this comes up in other lessons.
If you are on OSX, a good way to type dagger alif was reported above, just in case you are interested.
In the first example, your alif is naked without any vowels or marks, which should be fine. In the second example, the alif has a fatha on it without a hamza, which I haven't seen before. I would either write it like "ا" , "أ" , or "أَ". I hope that helps.
The 2nd is wrong
Bottom line :
either use الأكل or ألأكل, the first being more common
The ا without a ء is called an aliph. Ex : كاتب (writer)
The أ with this ء atop the ا is called a hamza by itself. It is no more an aliph. It is a hamza now, another letter than aliph, with variants: أ إ ئ ؤ
Putting a hamza on the alif of the definite article is simply wrong. You can write the definite article as الـ or, if you want to write the short vowel, as اَلـ. If you have a keyboard with a hazmat al-waSl, you can also write ٱلـ , but ألـ is simply wrong.
I think you actually can use hamza on a definite article if it's in a position where the glottal stop can be sounded, e.g. at the beginning of a phrase or sentence. But, generally, you are right.
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You pronounce a hamza at the beginning of a phrase, but even then, you never actually write it that way to the best of my knowledge.
You're missing a letter in the plural form you cited here. It's actually this:
اطعمة
I believe you might only use the plural where you are talking about different kinds of food. Sort of like we might do in English with 'cheeses' or 'wines'.
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-- oops, you're correct DavidH, I left out the 3ain before the mim -- I will fix that error in my earlier post via "EDIT", for the sake of future learners -- thanks --
In trying to understand the speech, I left off the definite article, but my answer was still accepted. Despite the fact it changes the entire meaning of the sentence.
How can this be in the progress test when these translations haven't appeared before?
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If you are struggling to type the arabic out on a keyboard, use a smart phone...it's really easy (although you might need an arabic speaker to ensure you download the correct alphabet...(i accidentally downloaded another language and struggled for a while but now its almost as fast to type as to pick the words!)
