"بَيْتهُ قَريب مِن بَيْتها."

Translation: His house is close to her house.

[joelp]

Just wondering why we have the 'i' sound in 'bayt-i-hu' and 'bayt-i-ha'.
Because of the speed of the sentences it can sometimes be a little difficult to tell if I'm hearing the words correctly.

[M_Alrehaily]

In this sentence, the i sound in 'bayt-i-ha' is correct, unlike in 'bayt-i-hu' which's supposed to be pronounced as 'baytuhu'. That's because 'baytuhu' is at the beginning of the sentence (the nominative case), and 'bayt-i-ha' is preceded by مِنْ 'min' which's one of many Arabic prepositions that require the word that follows to have the i sound, which's كسرة kasra. (the genitive case).

Check the case lesson for more information.

[Away54]

بَيْتُهُ قَرِيْبٌ مِنْ بَيْتِهَا

[KatieC993112]

Thank you M_Alrehaily! That's very helpful. So we can't rely on the audio.

[Crossmount]

thank you for that , the audio can be very confusing

[anne723596]

'close to' and 'near to' mean the same.

[ConchiCastillo]

'His house is next to hers' wasn't accepted. How would you say that in Arabic then? Thank you!

[tsuj1g1r1]

بِجَانِبِ

bi-jaanibi, which literally means "in the side of ..."

بيته بجانب بيتها

[GrahamWhit324102]

"his house is next to her house" just sounds awful, because of the repetition of "house". I think that, to make the English idiomatic, the answer should be "his house is next to hers". And this is regardless of whether "his house is next to her house" and "his house is next to hers" have different Arabic translations: these two seem, in English, to have the same meaning, but the first sounds much clumsier than the second.

[mist980761]

I said close instead of near...whats the difference

[Away54]

As prepositions, both "close to" and "near" can be synonymous. Please correct me if I am wrong :))

[KhanUmerzai]

His house is near to her house may also be accepted as correct.

[SyedOmar971994]

"His house is close from her house" wasn't accepted, But "من" means "from" as I learned in previous lessons.

[KatieC993112]

SyedOmar, languages can never be translated completely word for word. Evidently, Arabic says "close from" not "close to" as in English. Russian also says "close from" (близко от), and French says "close of" (près de). I expect other people can give other different examples from languages I don't know. We can't demand that they all follow the same pattern!

[avisarid1]

Why does the feminine version
بيتها
Have alif at the end and the masculine does not have waw?

[tsuj1g1r1]

Because the vowel at the end of 'baytuhaa' is long, and the vowel at the end of 'baytuhu' is short. Before silence, the pronunciation of 'baytuhaa' is going to remain the same, but 'baytuhu' will just be pronounced 'baytuh.'