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- Topic: Arabic >
- "اَلْباب باب."
46 Comments
@Panchete
It is indeed fortunate that you now know that a door is not a window. Very good news. :-)
60
Interesting sentence.
Reads as "the door door". Confusing at first, but highlights that Arabic may have neither a copula ("A is B") nor an indefinite article ("a door").
- 219
How would you say 'The door is beautiful'? Would it be...
الـباب جميل.
How will it differ from 'The beautiful door'?
Yes, you are right. The door is beautiful: الباب جميل
The beautiful door just gets the definite article at the attributive adjective.: الباب الجميل
I think the case marker is usually omitted at the end of a sentence.
Only in standard pronunciation you say baabun. Even al-baab is different in standard arabic: al-baabu.
My understanding is most newspapers and books dont have diacritics so the spoken dialects dont add extra vowels at the end because they don't know they should.
So al-baabu reads as al-bab. No way to know its baabu other than knowing standard arabic.
Now I am thinking this course is less modern standard arabic and more like Saudi spoken dialect. Anyone know what dialect this is?
@Azeem - and then 76 people will ask next time why doesn't this mean "The door"? Seems you miss the idea of learning grammar in your zest of labeling everything as stupid.
You're right. It seems people sometimes try to make a language more like theirs instead of trying to learn the new language.
@nourina - yes, it makes sense. "The door is a door". It is an equational sentence. Once you understand this grammar construct, you can go on to make sentences like "The man is a teacher" (replace 'The door' with 'The man' الرجل, and 'a door' with 'a teacher' مدرس). Hope this helps.
@Charlotte - The door is a door" is an equational sentence and makes perfect sense grammatically (which is why we are here... To learn the grammar :-)
Once you understand this grammar construct, you can go on to make sentences like "The man is a teacher" (replace 'The door' with 'The man' الرجل, and 'a door' with 'a teacher' مدرس).
Hope this helps.
Correct. If they had given less strange examples like "The door is beautiful", immediately the crowd wisdom out here starts debating why does it not mean "The beautiful door?"
Check other questions on the Arabic modules. It is full of such discussions. All because they did not understand the basic equational sentence structure.
Hope you don't fall into that trap of ignoring grammar labelling it strange; and understand this equational sentence properly.
Regards.
Haha. I'm so sick after completing this lesson. Too many stupid and unnatural sentences made me cry
Where did you get the floor from?
The given sentence is "The door is a door"... Need some more practice.
