"Bob is a doctor."
Translation:بوب دُكتور.
23 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1776
In my understanding, دكتور is more like a title (e.g., also for scientific doctors) and طبيب is a medical doctor.
524
The Semitic languages (among others) don't use an explicit copula ("is" here) in the present tense (and even in other tenses tend to co-opt another verb), nor do they have an explicit indefinite article ("a"/"an").
My beginner understanding is that SMA works similarly to Israeli Hebrew הוא in some nominal sentences called "equative" (in which both subject and predicate are definite): http://www.llf.cnrs.fr/sites/llf.cnrs.fr/files/evenements/colloques/DG_copula.pdf However, there is often "zero copula" situations and actual dialects of Arabic seem to differ on this matter. Examples of zero copula: Matthew Aldrich, Arabic vs Arabic: A Dialect Sampler, p. 55.