Question 1

Why do we say هؤلاء الطلاب with ال (the) instead of just هؤلاء طلاب?

Accepted Answer

Adding ال (the) right after a demonstrative word like هؤلاء (these) links them into a single phrase meaning "these students". If you drop the ال, it creates a full sentence meaning "These are students". Since we need "these students" to be the subject of our sentence, we must use ال.

Question 2

We used هؤلاء for "these students". Would we also use it for "these schools"?

Accepted Answer

No, and this is a very important rule in Arabic! The word هؤلاء is only used for human plurals (like students, teachers, or girls). For non-human plurals like schools or books, Arabic treats them grammatically as a single female. So, "these schools" would actually use the feminine singular word for this: هذه المدارس.

Question 3

Why is it تلك المدرسة (that school) instead of ذلك المدرسة?

Accepted Answer

Demonstratives like "that" have to match the gender of the noun they point to. The word المدرسة (school) is feminine because it ends with the tied-taa letter (ة). Because of this, we must use the feminine form for "that", which is تلك. If we were pointing to a masculine noun, we would use ذلك.

Question 4

Where is the word for "are" in this sentence?

Accepted Answer

Arabic does not use a present-tense verb for "is" or "are". This is called a nominal sentence. You simply state the subject, هؤلاء الطلاب (these students), followed by the information about them, من تلك المدرسة (from that school). The "are" is naturally understood by putting these two parts together.

هؤلاء الطلاب من تلك المدرسة.

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