"سامْية دُكْتورة جَيِّدة."

Translation: Samia is a good doctor.

[Boogieforme]

I'm wondering, when the complete sentence is read, it phonetically sounds like "Samia-ten doctura-tun jaïda". But the individual words are "Samia doctura jaïda". What is going on there? Can anyone explain?

[jamie521]

Those are the case endings, which are generally unwritten. It should actually be "Saamiya-tu ductuura-tun jayyida" but the cases seem to be quite wrong in much of this course

[benton.1]

Why would it not be Saamiya-tun?

[DavidHarri227108]

I believe saamiya-tun is correct.

[RezviAhmed]

When used in an end of a word "ta" is pronounced as "a".. I'm not sure though

[DavidHarri227108]

Yes, the ta marbouta is a modified heh. It usually marks the feminine gender, but not in every case.

The /t/ is only pronounced with the voweling or in an idafa, e.g. sayaara-tun, sayaara-tan, sayaara-tin or sayaara-t al-ustaađa. And, with a possessive pronoun, it turns into an actual /t/, e.g. sayaarati, sayaarto, sayaarat-ha, etc.

[moshekopolovich]

Can someone explain why it's jayyida and not jayyada?

[RajasDaithankar]

@Moshe - because there is a kasra under the shadda on the "ya" in Jayyida.

[moshekopolovich]

So I should think of it as the line is connected to the shadda and not to the ya itself? Like hamza?

[RajasDaithankar]

Shadda makes the "Y" become "yy", the kasra makes the "yy" sound "yyi". If there was no shadda, the kasra would have gone below the "y" and make it "yi".

[moshekopolovich]

Thanks! It would have been nice if Duo would have taught that somewhere.

[GregBroomhall]

I know -ten is added to some spoken words, but have no idea when this is done or why

[DavidHarri227108]

Check above in this thread. Plus you will probably find something on voweling / cases in the docs.

[DavidHarri227108]

I believe the proper translation is not "doctor" but "professor" or maybe "teacher". Are there dialects where 'duktuur' is actually used for 'doctor' rather than the Arabic word Tabiib?