- Forum >
- Topic: Arabic >
- "Is Arwa an engineer?"
"Is Arwa an engineer?"
Translation:هَل أَرْوى مُهَنْدِسة؟
22 Comments
Shouldn't it be "مُهَنْدِس"? Or is Arwa a female name?
Nevermind, looked it up, Arwa is indeed feminine.
it's not very fair when we don't know if a name is female or male. I guessed male for Arwa; I always thought Tamer was female and found out (by making a mistake) this week that it was a guy's name! maybe you could put (m) or (f) besides names the first time you're using them in lessons.
Why is it spelled اروى and not اروا. Am I missing a difference in sound here between ا and ى?
337
Jellos1, you have a good question - but advanced a bit.
In short, the "Arwa" word has more than three letters and is not ي as the last letter - like دنيا.
So, it should be written as أروى and not أروا.
are we meant to look up the genders for names if we're unfamiliar with them, or ...?
Language is culture, so, yes. I got this wrong because I didn't know that it's a common woman's name. I found this wiki helpful for this name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arwa Since names have meanings in many cultures, it is vocab building to learn that this name is associated with gracefulness, freshness.
That's a lovely reply. I looked up what your username meant hhh -enjoy your grape juice ;)
- 21
In my experience, more often than not, names that end in A are female.
Nedia, Hethura, Gammora, Renia, arwa, lama, zorha, nosra, olfa, saida, bedia, houda, fardowsa....All of these are female names. If you learn a male name that ends in A it is an exception to the usual. I think I only know one male with an arabic name that ends in A and I think it is not actually A but the sound that is written in the course with a 3. His name is 3l3 I think not ala but I'm not sure.
That's a good rule of thumb. Come to think of it I've only come across a handful of male names ending with an 'a' and that may be due to spelling variations; Isa, Musa, Yahya, Taha, Zakariya(h), Abdulla(h), Hamza(h)
but as you can see, there are several of them, and so arf2wise's question still stands. I have had a lot of trouble trying to figure out which names are which gender myself. And in Arabic, it is of utmost importance to know the gender, as all the nouns and verbs both reflect gender.
A better way to look at it might be from the viewpoint of the Arabic spelling. If the name ends in a ta marbouta, it's almost always feminine. Not always, there are some weird exceptions such as Usama (اسامة) and Khalifa (خليفة), but usually.
On the other hand, if it ends in aleph or aleph + hamza or -allah, it's less predictable.
Thanks for these interesting exceptions, Usama (اسامة) and Khalifa (خليفة). Very helpful.
3alaa2 = Ala (علاء), sometimes written as 'Alaa. The hamza at the end is not usually pronounced.
Sarebbe bello che anche con il corso di Arabo ci fossero, come per altri corsi, dei consigli e informazioni per le diverse sezioni. Grazie, é un bel corso che trovo utile e ben fatto.
Mention male or female withthe name so that we may know where to put which word or adjective for male or female. Like I dont know lama is a female name or male.
