"a smart Arab American girl"

Translation: بِنْت أَمْريكِيّة عَرَبِيّة ذَكِيّة

[Connie_Sullivan]

Is this sentence formulated this way because each adjective is describing the adjective before it? So literally the sentence is saying smart describes Arab, Arab describes American, American describes the girl? So it reads girl American Arab smart?

[Bryson610892]

The structure implies that "american" describes "a girl", "arab" describes "an american girl" and "smart" describes "an arab american girl".

You could switch Arab and American to emphasize that she is an Arab girl who is also incidentally an American.

Or you could say "bint dhakiyya amrikiyya 3arabiyya" to mean "a smart girl (who is) arab american.

[Syed243514]

That is what I did, the second composition, but the DUO does not know that much either.
As much as I am understanding;
"bint zakiyya Arabiya amerikiya" and
"bint Arabiya amerikiya zakiyya" are as good as the other two compositions without an error. But I am just learning.

[benton.1]

There is a prescribed order for saying adjectives. According to that order, which we know how to use naturally in our native languages, but have to look up if we want to tell someone the order, "smart" has to come before nationality. To not sound strange, and to be correct, we have to say "A smart Arab American girl" and not "An Arab American smart girl". The best way to think about the word order is that we say the words in the Arabic sentence in the reverse order that we do in the English sentence. "A smart Arab American girl" vs "(A) girl American Arab smart".

[Netanel_Hol]

Exactly. This is how it works in the semitic languages, such as hebrew and arabic.

[FatimaFarooq]

Does the placement of the words matter?

[Jubz___]

yes. it is just like any other foreign language

[Latif127541]

This seems backwards to me

[AniOhevYayin]

Word order: girl, american, smart, arab. Bryson610892 describes it well above.

[Vismaior]

In proper MSA should the last word be nunated as well? ... dthakyyatun

[Bryson610892]

No, if a sentence ends in a short vowel or a nunated vowel it becomes a sukun, so the t is also not pronounced.

[Vismaior]

So it would be baiTUN amrikyyaTUN arabyyaTUN dthakyy... nothing at the end of the last word, even ta marbuta is not pronounced?

[Bryson610892]

Yes, but the fatha above the letter yaa right before the taa marbuta is pronounced, so it's dhakiyya and not dhakiyy, because dhakiyy would be masculine and it wouldn't be spelled with taa marbuta.

So actually what I said before is not exactly right. The sentence can end with a short vowel, like if it's a feminine noun or adjective, but not a case marking vowel or nunation, which change to sukun at the end of a sentence.

[Vismaior]

thank you :)