Questions & Answers about الحاسوب بطيء.
Where is the word for "is" in this sentence?
Arabic sentences that start with a noun do not use a word for "is" or "are" in the present tense. Simply putting the subject and its describing word together automatically creates the meaning "is".
Why doesn't the word for "slow" (بطيء) have "al-" (the) attached to it?
This is how Arabic shows that an adjective is the predicate (the information coming after "is"). The subject is definite (الحاسوب, the computer), but the adjective is indefinite (بطيء, slow). If both had "al-", it would just mean "the slow computer" rather than a complete sentence.
If I wanted to say "the car is slow", would the word for slow stay the same?
No, it would change. Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. Because الحاسوب is masculine, we use the masculine form بطيء. For a feminine noun like the car, we would add the feminine ending taa marbuta to make it بطيئة.
What is the little symbol at the very end of بطيء?
That is a hamza (ء), which represents a glottal stop (a tiny catch in your throat, like the pause in the middle of "uh-oh"). In the word بطيء, it sits by itself on the line right after the letter yaa (ي).
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