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- "هَل هٰذا رَقَمِك يا مَها؟"
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1360
هل هذا (رقـمُـكِ) يا مها
the diacritics are displaced here ... "M" must have Dhamma (U-vowel) and the Kasra (I-vowel) should be under the last consonant (K) because it's dedicated to a female (Maha)
So the pronounciation will be like what? Raqamuki? I don't quite understand why because we've been taught that the possessive article goes like -ik or -ak for every word. Is that generally wrong, is this a difference in Arabic depending on the region or is this word an exception? I am really confused as I see comments saying 'this is wrong' all the time.
- 1360
The varieties you've mentioned are dialectic variations, used mainly in Egypt and the Levant. Standard Arabic is not like that. In Standard Arabic, it would be Raqmuka to a male, snd Raqmuki to a female
The lessons of DL keep mentioning that it is standard arabic whereas in the arab nations it is not taught like that at school. So many mistakes are made, especially with the audio which is really bad particularly with the declensions. As an arab speaker, i think that much more effort is needed for Duolingo to pretend teaching real Standard Arabic, and not dialects. Well, even though dialects are obviously more spoken, standard arabic is more understood by arab people from allover the arab world, especially the younger generations.
And yes : Raqmuki for the true pronounciation : Raqmu- (number, nominative case), ki (your, as a female)
TJ_Q8: what is the difference between raqam and raqm? Why do we not use raqm here?
رقَمُكَ
رقْمُكَ
- 1360
To what I know:
(Raqm: رَقْم) is the noun, and it stands for many things in fact but the common meaning is (digit). Hence the term رَقْمي (raqmiy) meaning (digital).
On the other hand, (Raqam: رَقَم) appears to be the verb, which according to some thesaurus means (to mark something) and it has very specific usages, like رَقَمَ النَّصْ (raqama an-nac) meaning (to put punctuation marks on the paragraph). A more relevant verb is رَقَّمَ (raqqama) which means to mark with a number.
So, I would say that (raqamuk) is not an accurate word, but it rather should be (raqmuk) meaning (your number) - as in phone number for example. If I want to add an accusative suffix to the verb (raqam) then that would be like (raqamak) and not (raqamuk), which might mean (to put a mark on you) - sounds weird already!
- 1360
Just now, I'm actually looking at Duolingo's sentence up there and I've realized their mistake. It should be رَقْمُكِ (raqmuki) and not (raqamik).
I have shared this to another lesson as some member have asked the similar issue, ie. "why not raqm instead of raqam?" https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/33122101
Not only Arabic ... I have seen some mixing formal and informal in another language course, not really good but I think it's still forgiven. But, I don't know the level of these Arabic mistakes whether it's forgiven or not :))
- 1360
Well, in some sense it is forgiven but they should have made it clear that it is not strictly standard or fusHa Arabic. When this course was to start, the main icon was the flag of Egypt when made me think that it would be about the Egyptian dialect. It's a common dialect specially with the spread of Egyptian TV shows and movies across the Arab world anyway so people are somewhat, most of the time, acquainted with it. But then the flag changed to the flag of the Arab league. Putting this flag should be a sign of the official Arabic language. Hence, more effort should be put into this. Apparently, not even the contributors are linguists or did study Arabic as a major in college or something.
All in all, it would be better to put in the introduction of this course that it is a mush course, composed of blocks from various dialects to aid travelers, and not to teach the proper standard language (as we say in Arabic: a rose from every garden). Needless to say, the audio recording is way off. The error margin well beyond 50% with the audio spelling because it was made by a machine. In the Irish course, the audio was made by real people speaking Irish. The down-side for this approach is that you can't slow down the audio they say. However, if they are serious here, they should provide real recordings instead of a machine.
TJ_Q8, I have found that الرَقَمُ is a noun which means "black and white mottled color" (according to القاموس المنور).
- 1360
Yes I guess it is also possible. The general meaning for this root ر ق م seems to be, in general, related to marking or making a sign by imprinting (writing or otherwise):
https://www.almaany.com/ar/dict/ar-ar/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%82%D9%85/
- 1064
For the umpteenth time, please accept هٰذه and هٰذا (and لكن while we're at it) without the dagger alif. It is impossible to type on a standard Arabic computer keyboard and completely unnecessary and I can't get the answer correct without copying it and pasting it from the correction, which defeats the purpose.
- 1360
maybe because of the addition of (phone)
I know it's correct and understood, but Duolingo apparently doesn't get it that way.
