Breakdown of حضرت حفلة عيد ميلاد أخي.
أخakh
brother
حفلةhafla
party / concert
يi
my / me (after a preposition)
حضرhadara
to attend
عيد'îd
holiday
ميلادmîlâd
birth
عيد ميلاد'îdu mîlâd
birthday
Questions & Answers about حضرت حفلة عيد ميلاد أخي.
How do we know حضرت means I attended?
The base verb for to attend is حضر (HaDara). To make it past tense for I, we add the suffix ـت (-tu) to the end, making it حضرت (HaDartu). Because short vowels are not usually written, this exact same spelling could also mean you (masculine) attended (HaDarta) or you (feminine) attended (HaDarti). The context of the sentence tells us it means I attended here!
Why is there no word for 'of' or an apostrophe-s to show it is my brother's party?
Arabic shows possession by placing nouns right next to each other in a chain, a grammar rule called Idafa. Instead of using a word for 'of', you just string the nouns together. حفلة عيد ميلاد أخي literally translates word-for-word as: party, festival, birth, my brother.
How does the phrase عيد ميلاد translate to birthday?
The word عيد means festival or holiday, and ميلاد means birth. When you put them together, عيد ميلاد literally means festival of birth, which is the standard Arabic phrase for birthday.
Words ending in ة (taa marbuta) like حفلة usually end in an 'ah' sound. Why does it have a 't' sound when spoken in this sentence?
You are right that حفلة (party) usually sounds like Hafla when spoken on its own or at the end of a sentence. However, when a word ending in ة is followed directly by a connected possessive word (like birthday), the ة is pronounced as a hard 't' to link the words together smoothly. So it is pronounced Haflat here.
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