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- "زَوْجَتِك أُسْتاذة يا كَري."
208 Comments
681
It's lots of fun trying to transliterate the replies to your comment back to Arabic script.
'Nonsense' sentences are useful for learning because they require you to draw on your knowledge of the rules, case markings etc to find the correct answer, instead of relying on context (e.g. 'wife' must be correct because husbands only have wives). It provides a deeper learning experience than just memorising sentences you'll use day to day. So ironically, it seems the narrower your world view is, the stronger your learning may be! I'll look forward to seeing a similar level of definitely-not-homophobic outrage in the 'My dog is generous' forum comments.
This is such a key point! The question of "would we hear this in an Arabic-speaking country?" is orthogonal to the question of "is it instructive for us to hear this while learning Arabic on Duo?"
At the risk of letting my sarcasm be misunderstood: I've been to several Spanish-speaking countries, and no one in my experience has ever said "mi oso bebe cerveza..."
294
Mehmet_KYMN:
For "g#y-l#sb#an" issues, I've also met similar things in other language courses (but not in general lessons like Arabic, as far as I know). But, for slangs (like as "زوجِك" in the sentence above), they did this only in Arabic.
685
I would like to hear the TTS engine say this. But maybe with a few ْ added.
سو ماني أَنْغَري كومَّنْتْس. كَلْم رَيْت دَوْن.
913
It appears that the makers of this course have no idea about what they are doing. I seriously doubt that this sentence would have any meaning in Saudi Arabia or other islamic countries. One could easily get in trouble in some Arabic-speaking countries for saying the stuff learned here. It started with calling a professor or a doctor "weird", and then went on with the dudes having skirts and now with the wife of Carrie. While these things would be completely OK in Denmark (and I personally support the right of all people to be free and happy), the law in most Arabic speaking countries is very different from the Western law and breaking it might have strong consequences. Are the makers of the course aware of the cultural etiquette of that part of the world?
913
I hope your optimistic views will materialize. I am quite pessimistic about the matter, but I hope I'm wrong and you're right
913
this language is at the moment strongly bound to a culture, but that could change in the future
what does this have to do with anything? DuoLingo is just trying to reinforce sentence construction so that you can learn your own vocabulary and properly construct sentences. All that matters is that the sentence is technically correct, not whether it's culturally sensitive. More to the point, if you started studying this course with the expectation of just memorizing phrases, you have completely missed the point.
Look dude, I'm a woman and my girlfriend is from Saudi Arabia. Her native language is Arabic, which is the only reason I'm trying to learn it, so I'm personally very happy with the inclusion and she would probably be too.
And btw, all her friends (from Saudi Arabia) were very happy for her when she told them she has a girlfriend, and even wanted to plan our wedding! So I'm very optimistic about things changing some time in the future.
Exactly! I'm a woman too and the whole reason I became inspired to learn Arabic was because of my good friend from Egypt (we're both LGBTQ). She was born in Saudi, is MusRab, and honestly her friends all know about it and range from chill to very enthusiastic so count me in among the optimists. I hope we're right! <3
558
I liked the gay couple, but it seems like most of the 'couple' sentences are on him. I think it whold be more intresting if there wold be more couples... like Rosa and Seth and Ibrahim and Mike and so on...
1515
Totally not.
That’s horrifying. Unless a woman with four husbands are included. Which will probably not happen ever.
What an insane abuse of male privilege.
But that’s just my opinion.
In most Arabic-speaking countries, it is common for a man to have more than one wife, but I don't think there is one where a woman can have a wife. If we were learning Dutch, say, it would be appropriate to have a sentence about a woman and her wife, but not about a man and his multiple wives. If learning Arabic, the opposite.
913
I might be wrong, but I think that the audio is wrong for the most of the Arabic sentences. It's a bit better for the individual words, but they add a lot of unnecessary "-tun" to every word without any reason
558
In Arabic there are a lot of varieties but I think that in 'Arabīyat ul-fuṣḥá' wich is the 'standard arabic' based on the reading in the Quran the way they pronounce is the right 'traditional' way (with the -tun in the end of words in the middele of santences). I think in 'modern' standard arabic they don't pronounce that...
294
Jamie521 oldestguru nizzanc Aurlien249681 brianwould:
Jamie521 and Aurlien249681, you're correct. It should be with Damma
زوجُكِ
For "زوجَك" , it's slang/dialect.
nizzanc brianwould, Modern Standard Arabic uses -tun, -tan, -tin, -ka, -ki, and any sound ending. All of them are taught in Arabic schools as endings's the key to understand Arabic perfectly. But in daily conversation, we may omit the endings.
DL team mix slang and standard in Arabic course. Whilst, in other courses like Chinese (which has multiple dialects) don't do that. Weird
169
Carrie and Judy is trying to teach us the proper usage of feminine and masculine noun and it's importance to Arabic. For eg , we can easily ( mistakenly) translate it into husband because the sentance end with woman Carrie. So Duo makes us think properly before translating.
105
I was confused at first, but now that I know they're doing that it makes it easier to know I'm not wrong.
294
أَتَأْتُونَ ٱلذُّكْرَانَ مِنَ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ.
وَتَذَرُونَ مَا خَلَقَ لَكُمْ رَبُّكُم مِّنْ أَزْوَٰجِكُم ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ عَادُونَ.
(Quran 26: 165-166)
May Allah bless you! jazakumullahu khairan! I'll find other courses without "disgust". Astagfirullahi wa tawba ilaihi.
702
An aspect I adore concerning this course is the desperate effort of the team to elaborate nonsense phrases. It is an excellent way to rationally learn and than implement at a neuronal level. Thank you!
Carrie is a woman; you can tell this from the Arabic suffix -ak -ik. If you were speaking to a man, you would use the suffix -ik -ak instead. See the lesson notes: https://www.duolingo.com/skill/ar/Family-2/tips-and-notes
681
Except that you've got it backwards. -ak is masculine, -ik is feminine (but the Duolingo lesson is correct).
313
Of course. After all, the challenge is understanding. You or me can perfectly understand the meaning of that sentence because it's grammatically correct. People learning English might struggle understanding it and, in that sense, your sentence is useful in an environment like this.
313
There's quite a big chunk of the Earth's surface where such a thing is possible right now.
In 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to establish same-sex marriage by law. Since then same-sex marriage has also been established by law in Belgium (2003), Spain (2005), Canada (2005), South Africa (2006), Norway (2009), Sweden (2009), Portugal (2010), Iceland (2010), Argentina (2010), Denmark (2012), Brazil (2013), France (2013), Uruguay (2013), New Zealand[c] (2013), Luxembourg (2015), the United States (2015), Ireland (2015), Colombia (2016), Finland (2017), Malta (2017), Germany (2017), Australia (2017), Austria (2019), Taiwan (2019), Ecuador (2019), and the United Kingdom (2020).
290
hahaha. Girls/women do have wives in quite a few countries. Did you really not know? It's fairly recent legislation.
290
MDJubaidul, "Can" is followed by the infinitive without the "to". So, "how can a girl HAVE a wife?"
127
Duo,if you are so open minded and democratic about different prospetives,why are you deleting the students comments. Basically,what youre doing,youre imposing your views on the majority,and youre not respecting the culture of the Arab countries,not to say that you try to provoke them.Plus,some of the students might get in trouble if they decide to repeat some of your lgbt sentences in most Arabic speaking countries,but you can care less.And btw,im not even a muslim.
I wanted to comment that this ideologically charged sentence is unnecessary in a beginner's language course, but then I imagined the deluge of righteous, sarcastic, aggressive responses such a comment would evoke from those unable to countenance any diversity of opinion, and so thought better of it.
294
زوجتُكِ
"zaujatuki" if we use the standard Arabic grammar.
The sentence means: Carrie is female and she has a female wife.
Islam have forbidden it from the start until the end (even though Carrie and her wife are not Muslims, like jwinters said)
I am so sorry I couldn't change Quran. :)
294
[Finally I can put together all my previous comments in one place]
وَلُوطًا إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ أَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُم بِهَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ مِّنَ الْعَالَمِينَ إِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّن دُونِ النِّسَاءِ ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ مُّسْرِفُونَ
[Al-A'raf : 80-81]
Please kindly read the verses. See that it's NOT related to whether Carrie and Judy are Muslims or not.
It's also NOT related to "Islamic" or Arab countries or Arab people or Arabic language [like other members have said].
Islam is Islam. Islam is NOT Arabic.
Quran is Quran, could not be changed! Whilst, Arabic is changing :D
More verse:
وَلُوطًا إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ أَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ وَأَنْتُمْ تُبْصِرُونَ (54) أَئِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِنْ دُونِ النِّسَاءِ بَلْ أَنْتُمْ قَوْمٌ تَجْهَلُو(55) [An-Naml: 54-55]
We see that, it was not related to ....
So it's okay if you want to discuss the lesbianism of Arabic or Muslim countries.
The quranic law is not related to it.
The quranic law is not just for Muslims or Arabic countries. We may see it clearly from the verses.
*I also just try to share knowledge :)
So, ...
I repeat : Islam is not about "Arabic people". Islam is not about "whether we are Muslims or not".
Quran is in Arabic but Quran never change; whilst Arabic is changing.
I am talking about Islam not Arabic.
Don't worry my word willn't change anything. And, perhaps, the world will hate me.
Furthermore... Even though killing each other and stealing are forbidden, people are still killing each other and stealing.
I am just saying that for myself, to strengthen myself.
So I will try to not steal or kill someone :)
*My country had been colonized by some other countries for hundreds of years, made us suffering but I would not take any revenge.
Also, actually... The rule of forbidding that act is taken from the Quran and Sunnah. I am so sorry I am not allowed to change the verses or narration. Hence, I should speak based on this :)
Don't worry my word willn't change anything. And, perhaps, the world will hate me.
Furthermore... Even though killing each other and stealing are forbidden, people are still killing each other and stealing.
I am just saying that for myself, to strengthen myself.
So I will try to not steal or kill someone :)
*My country had been colonized by some other countries for hundreds of years, made us suffering but I would not take any revenge.
Also, actually... The rule of forbidding that act is taken from the Quran and Sunnah. I am so sorry I am not allowed to change the verses or narration. Hence, I should speak based on this :)
*Is this drama continuing :D
290
Away54, I see there are 114 Surahs. Are they not subdivided in any way? It's very difficult to find one just with its name. I have to admit I asked the internet, "what number is Surah An Naml?" and so found it was number 27. But is there another way of finding it?
294
Katie,
Oh I'm so sorry, Al-A3raf is No. 7 while An-Naml is No. 27.
1) "Are they not subdivided in any way?"
I don't understand what your question mean exactly. There's no subchapter in each Surah if it's pure Quran (muSaf). But some Quran publishers with translation and explanation give some subchapters.
2) "is there another way of finding it?"
We may write the Verse words that we remembered in Google. If we can write the entire sentence, it will be easier.
I guess you use Sahih International pdf, then Surah's number is the only effective way.
290
There's some misunderstanding. You wrote, "Oh I'm so sorry, Al-A3raf is No. 7 while An-Naml is No. 27." But I had no problem finding that An-Naml was no. 27. I don't understand why you mention Al-A3raf?
And you're quite right, I used the wrong word when I said "subdivided". What I meant was "grouped", the very opposite! I mean, for example, if they were grouped in 10s, so instead of just saying the name, which can only be found if you go through all 114, well, at least until you find the one you want, you could say, eg, An-Naml, Group 2. Though, when I come to think of it, it would be even simpler to say An-Naml (27). Nobody ever does anything like that?
294
Katie,
"Why you mention Al-A'raf?"
It's because I have mentioned two Surah in my post, ie. Al-A'raf and An-Naml. (Note: Internet doesn't use Al-A3raf, it's from Duo).
For groupings: There are 30 juz in Quran. Each juz consists of 20 pages. Hence, 30th is for Surah 78-114 which is called as Juz 3amma, 29th is for 67-77, 28th is for 58-76, and so on. An-Naml will be in 19th.
We oftentimes use this grouping for reciting purpose. For example, we target to finish one Juz in a day and occasionally for searching.
For finding Surah, many people often apply An Naml 27 and not An Naml Juz 19.
Actually, how to find the Surah or Verse is flexible, there's many ways. The best way is by memorising all the Verses, no need to search it :)
290
Thanks, Away54. One minor point: I can't find a mention by you of surah Al-A3raf anywhere in this conversation. Secondly, I've just realised that as long as you have the Surah number, eg 27 for Al-Naml, there's no need for the juz number. It's only when the more specific number is a subdivision of the less specific, eg juz, as in the Christian gospels (eg Chapter N, Verse N) that it's useful. Does juz mean nut? I input جوز into Google Translate. But perhaps it's spelt differently. Ah! I've found it online: جُزْءْ ! And it means "part". How IS one supposed to know how to spell Arab words from a transliteration?! At least I've learnt the word for "nut". There's always a silver lining.
294
KatieC,
"I can't find a mention by you of surah Al-A3raf anywhere... "
Kindly try to type Al-A'raf (and not Al-A3raf) in Find in page at your Chrome browser. I'm so sorry I couldn't send a screenshot here.
For Juz: Yes, it's جُزْءٌ.
For Arabic Transliteration: each site has its own style. Example: In English transliteration, generally ش is sha while in Indonesian it's sya. Hans Wehr applies š. ع is 'a in English and Indonesian while Duolingo takes 3a.
There are many methods. You may see here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Arabic#:~:text=Romanization%20is%20often%20termed%20%22transliteration,the%20sound%20of%20the%20language.
290
Actually, I'm lucky enough to have it in hard copy. I was given the book on a street corner by some proselytising Muslims. And it calls itself SAHEEH INTERNATIONAL (sic). But you are right, the Surah's number is the only way. So I can check the number online.
290
Hey! I've just been reading about Hamza, and in the Wikipedia article, in the list of short words which start with hamzat al-waṣl, it features "امْرُؤ imru' (fem. امْرَأَة)". Google translates امْرُؤ as "untidy". What?! So the feminine of "untidy" is "woman"?? I must have got something wrong...
At this point, having encountered quite a few sentences like that, I started to think and considered a number of options:
1) If Carrie is a female, sentence like that is quite irrelevant for Arab countries - so I will skip the obvious interpretation and try to find some 'hidden' meaning ;) as listed below: 2) Carrie may be a male name too? 3) Carrie is a female, but her husband has many wives, and they all refer to each other as wife, being one happy family married all together, so the sentence means that one of her husband's wives is a professor!
If you find any other interpretations, apart from the literal one, please do add them :) If only Carrie could speak, she would tell as what the truth is, yet she lurks on DL in some of the sentences causing confusion amongst the learners who in despair reach the comments sections trying to find understanding of the given meaning ;) DL sometimes makes us play detective in here :)
294
Anon.User20, jvitti624 is correct. The dialect/slang's word clearly states that Carrie is female.
زوجتِك
If it's male, the dialect/slang's word will be:
زوجتَك
Note: Both "g#y-l#sbian" are always forbidden in Quran (even though many Arabs do these and perhaps all Arab countries would allow it). Quran will never change.
1515
It probably won’t. Once it’s written down, it’s set in stone, pretty much like any other religion’s writings. We really can’t expect any of them to change. Nor should we.
294
Onyx.Rose:
As a Muslim, I should say "it definitely won't" :)
For "like any other religion's writings", it's a heavy statement for my faith, hope you understand it, so I'll keep away from this statement. I couldn't give an upvote for your comment because of that.
...و لنا أعمالنا و لكم أعمالكم... (١٣٩ : ٢)
[ But if it's allowed to discuss this here, I'll respond it. إن شاء الله ]
Note: I'm not an Arab. I study Arabic because of Quran.
294
Onyx.Rose:
Studying Quran and Hadeeth is awesome! We may find a lot of excellent thought/concepts, more advanced than any man made that we have studied. However, the problem is in the people. Many of us couldn't grasp the Quran and Hadeeth's meanings perfectly.
1515
I got it. There was a religion I used to study. It was depressing. It’s one reason why I said, “We shouldn’t expect any of them to change.” Almost all of them tend to be conservative and authoritarian, and they intend to stay that way. I think that was on purpose. To even suggest making changes on any of them would be considered blasphemous according to each religion’s own standards. I don’t expect much different.
98
The exercise should be "I am carrie, i am a lesbian and my wife is a professor". I'd be interested to learn the words gay and lesbian in Arabic also
I am not sure why you think the exercise should be as you describe. Gay people don't have to announce their sexual orientation in order to talk about their lives. I would recommend that you use Google (or a dictionary) to learn the words 'gay' and 'lesbian' in Arabic. Keep in mind that some translations may be slurs (e.g. "Luti").
Duolingo is an American platform, ofcourse they're promoting homosexuality. Yet I haven't seen them promote gender equality or racial equality which are more important. Majority of the world does not support homosexuality btw, which makes these propaganda attempts laughably similar to North Korean propaganda.
290
AND they have to limit themselves to the letters we've learnt so far. I imagine that might explain their frequent use of "weird". To get us to practise Ayn.
313
Well, I know a lot of "Smiths", me included, who eat kebab and probably there's a relevant number of "Smiths" who are Muslims.... Fortunately the world is not sectioned in areas defined only by its (arbitrary and changeable) borders.
Anyway, it's just a sentence, so I don't actually understand why you feel DL is dictating you or anybody else anything at all.
681
There's nothing clever about throwing around terms like SJW and snowflake. They reflect nothing more than a lazy world view dictated by propaganda.
681
Oh you mean the mainstream media that got Trump elected by giving him massively more coverage than any other candidate? Sure.
681
If you're not talking about any country's media specifically then that's an even more specious claim, which ignores the complete lack of consistency between the media environment in different countries.
313
If the mainstream media is truly under control of leftists it must be a very new, fakey or feeble phenomenon because most of the anthroposphere is clearly under capitalist ruling.
313
You might be right but, if that's true, then it must be also true that Duo is promoting heterosexuality implicitly too. :D
290
Thanks, Away54. Yes, I found Al-A'raf by searching for it on this page. The reason I hadn't seen it before is that you quoted that Surah in a conversation with someone else on a different subject. Yes, there is no one agreed system of transliteration from Arabic, and it makes sense that the Indonesians use a different grapheme for eg ش from that used by English-speakers, but I thought that if we use the Duolingo system we're more likely to understand each other. I for instance don't like "gh" for غ , but I comply, for ease of understanding. Thanks for that link about Romanisation of Arabic. Interesting about the difference between transliteration and transcription. I was mostly familiar with the meaning of transcription as applied to the activity of monks in Europe regarding the holy books. Also, in music, rewriting something in a different key. Interesting. Out of interest, what's the convention for transliterating/transcribing from Arabic where the definite article gets swallowed up and not pronounced?
294
KatieC, you're welcome!
"Out of interest, what's the convention for transliterating/transcribing from Arabic where the definite article gets swallowed up and not pronounced?"
Example: الرجل ar-rajul, الشمس ash-shams. As far as I concern.
290
Thanks, Away54. I should have known; that's how Duolingo do it. Well, according to the link you gave me, that would be transcription, not transliteration. But I don't think this difference is widely known. So I suppose we'll carry on calling it transliteration.
294
You're welcome, KatieC993112!
Nice information about transliteration vs transcription from you, I'll look into this matter, thanks....
But yeah, I guess we use the "transliteration" term instead of "transcription".
There are men named Carrie. For example Cary Grant. He was gay though. It isn't a common name for men but it does exist. It is most commonly spelled as Kerry or Kerri. I went to elementary school with a boy named Kerry. There is no rule saying it can't be spelled Carrie for a guy. I have no doubt somewhere there is a man with that spelling. It is all the same name with different spellings.