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- "في الْخَلْفِيّة اِمْرَأة غَن…
35 Comments
Hunak means "there" in the since of "at that place." You're thinking of the existential "there" in English, which expresses something that exists. There is no existential "there" in Arabic. We translate it many different ways. In this case, we use "fii" because it exists IN a specific place, the background. The existential "there" is implied. If we added "hunak" it would be more like, "There (in that place), in the background, is a rich woman" instead of "There is (exists) a rich woman in the background."
It's a subtle but important distinction.
1268
The skill "In my bag" introduces هُناك to mean "there is" if it's at the beginning of the sentence, and the course consistently follows this up until this skill. So the lack of هُناك is noticeable and probably should be explained in another tips and notes section.
It is now explained in the tips section - maybe Duo pays attention to the comments that have been made :-)
Unfortunately, the tips section is apparently visible only on desktop and not on the phone. :(
Yeah. And the Arabic script on the desktop is tiny. I cant find a way to make ot bigger (and theres a ton of white space on my screen) so I cant even read the tips!
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I was using my phone for the longest time and didn't know there was a Tip section, until someone pointed out to me that it is only on the Desktop/Web version.
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Is there really such a thing in English as "existential" there? Could you expand, westward_man?
It is also accurate to say,,,,There is in the background a rich woman, but alas,,,Duolingo experts did not accept that. :)
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Wiebke74... It is grammatically correct, but unidiomatic. It's not the natural order that a native speaker would use. It's what's known as a marked order.
Yes, but if the emphasis (in English) is to highlight what is going on in the background, then you would in fact want to say, "In the background there is a rich woman." (9Nov20)
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Yes, Decybele, and that is what's known as a "marked" order. It's for a particular situation. The neutral (unmarked) order is the one given by Duolingo. There's no emphasis on anything in particular.
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What about "There in the background is a rich woman"? I think this should be accepted by Duo but it is not.
Can't we write 'there in the background is a rich woman'? Does it change the sentence? Please explain!
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'there in the background is a rich woman' is not wrong, but it's not the normal word order, ie, the word order is marked.
Can this also mean 'in the background of a situation'? i.e. in the context of another event, or is it purely literal?
هناك امرأة غنية في الخلفية This is the translation for this English sentence Given sentence means ' In the background rich woman' .
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I would say "there is a rich woman in the background." Can the prepositional phrase be either leading or following the main phrase in Arabic?
Pronunciation question: The audio often has an "uh" sound between words spoken quickly. And in this sentence, there is a "t" sound between "background" and "woman." Any feedback on this?
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"woman" is singular (one adult female person) "women" is plural (several adult female persons) but i haven't learned "women" in arabic so far.
Really? I never use any punctuation for the exercises and it's never a problem - maybe there's something else?
