في هذه القرية أربعون بيتا.fî hâdhihi l-qaryati arba'ûna baytâ
There are forty houses in this village.
Breakdown of في هذه القرية أربعون بيتا.
الal
the
فيfî
in / about, regarding
بيتbayt
house
هذهhâdhihi
this (f)
Questions & Answers about في هذه القرية أربعون بيتا.
Why is بيتا singular if there are forty of them? And why does it have an extra letter at the end?
In Arabic, numbers from 11 to 99 are followed by a singular noun, not a plural one! Also, this counted noun must take the accusative case (which usually adds an "-an" sound). Because بيت (house) ends in a standard consonant, we add the letter "alif" (ا) to hold the double-line symbol for that "-an" sound, making it بيتا.
I sometimes see "forty" written as أربعين. Why is it أربعون here?
The "tens" numbers (20, 30, 40, etc.) change their ending depending on their grammatical role. Here, أربعون is the main subject of the sentence (it is the thing that exists in the village), so it takes the default nominative ending ـون (-oon). If it were the object of a verb or came right after a preposition, it would change to أربعين (-een).
Why does القرية (the village) have the prefix الـ (al-) if the English translation just says "this village"?
To say "this village" in Arabic, you literally say "this the-village" (هذه القرية). If you drop the الـ (al-) and just write هذه قرية, it changes the meaning into a complete sentence: "This is a village".
Where is the Arabic word for "there are" in this sentence?
Arabic doesn't have a direct, single word for "there is" or "there are". Instead, you often just start the sentence with a location phrase. By starting with في هذه القرية (In this village...), the sentence naturally translates to "In this village [there are] forty houses".