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Questions & Answers about هل أنت موظف؟
How do we know "you" refers to a man in this sentence?
In Arabic, the pronoun for "you" changes depending on who you are talking to. Here, أنت (anta) is the masculine singular form. If you were speaking to a female, the spelling would stay the same but the pronunciation would change to أنت (anti).
How would I ask this exact question to a woman?
You would use the feminine "you" which is أنت (anti). You also have to make the noun feminine to match by adding the feminine ending (taa marbuuta) to the end of the word, making it موظفة (muwaDDafa). The full sentence becomes هل أنت موظفة؟.
Where is the word for "are" in this Arabic sentence?
There isn't one! Arabic does not use the verb "to be" (am, is, are) in present-tense sentences. A statement just links the pronoun directly to the noun.
If there is no word for "are", what does هل mean?
هل (hal) does not translate directly to "are". It is a special question word that you place at the very beginning of a regular statement to turn it into a yes/no question.
Why is there no Arabic word for "an" before "employee"?
Arabic does not have indefinite articles like "a" or "an". The single word موظف (muwaDDaf) means both "employee" and "an employee" depending on what sounds best in the English translation.