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- Topic: Arabic >
- "هَل هٰذا إيجارِك يا روزا؟"
21 Comments
Rosa gives you (her landlord) $500, and you ask her the above question; just to double check whether she is paying you this week's rent or whether she considers that she is giving you this $500 as a loan - to be repaid within one year at 25% intetest, monthly compounding :-)
or several roommates contribute to bills & one wants to know if that money is toward rent or something else, like utilities or groceries...
I'm from Bangldesh & here we use the very same word for 'rent' while speaking Bangla not Arabic.I was amused when I saw this.
My husband is Arab and he said he had never seen this little alif at the top of any letter. It should be in between letters as it will be confusing for students. There are lots of other bits that he finds incorrect and many that are unnecessary as they are not even used by Arabs themselves on a daily basis. I am lucky to have him correct me as I learn.
949
There are several Arabic dialects/languages, sometimes not fully mutual intelligible (like the Kuwaiti Arabic and Morroccan Arabic). On top of that, the everyday Arabic writing (as the one you can find in a newspaper) is not the same as the standard (Qur'anic) Arabic that includes diacritics and other fine details. Therefore the differences you mentioned here. I find very challenging to read the "everyday Arabic" as you have to guess the vowels, even though it may be easy for an Arab person, because the Arabs already know the words/vocabulary unlike myself. Standard Arabic has its own challenges even though the vowels are marked with diacritics such as the little fatha, damma, kasra etc. It still has sounds I'm not used to and sometimes there are some "guessed" (not written) word terminations (such as "-un")
- 332
This new alif that you are introducing on top of the هذا... I don't think it's a thing? It is causing answers to be rejected. I have studied quite a bit of Arabic and have never come across this. In fact, I don't even have this character on my keyboard.
- 1016
This is called a dagger alif! It is a vestige of an old Qur'anic writing system, and is really only used today on demonstratives (like هذا) and the word "but" (ولكن). You're correct though that it is impossible to type on a standard Arabic computer keyboard, and it should definitely be reported.
- 332
Yeah, agreed, it's just not a thing in modern standard Arabic. It's pedantry and overkill to have it in the course.
