Questions & Answers about هل القط سريع؟
Why doesn't the Arabic word for "fast" have الـ (al-) attached to it?
Because it is the predicate (the part giving new information about the subject). In an Arabic nominal sentence, to say "The cat is fast", the subject gets الـ (the) like القط, but the adjective does not, like سريع. This mismatch is exactly how Arabic implies the word "is". If both had الـ (القط السريع), it would just mean "the fast cat" rather than a full sentence.
Where is the word for "is" in this sentence?
Arabic does not use a word for "is" or "are" in present-tense sentences! You simply place the subject (القط) and the adjective (سريع) next to each other. The "is" is naturally understood from this nominal sentence structure.
How does هل work to form a question here?
هل is a simple question word used for "yes/no" questions. Unlike English, which makes you swap the order of words (changing "The cat is fast" to "Is the cat fast?"), Arabic just takes the regular statement القط سريع (The cat is fast) and puts هل at the very beginning.
If we were asking about a female cat, how would this sentence change?
Because adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe, we would need to add the feminine marker taa marbuuTa (ة) to both the noun and the adjective. The sentence would become هل القطة سريعة؟ (Is the female cat fast?).
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