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أليست قواعد البيت مهمة؟ بلى، هي مهمة جدا.

أليست قواعد البيت مهمة؟ بلى، هي مهمة جدا.alaysat qawâ'idu al-bayti muhimmatan? balâ, hiya muhimmatun jiddan.
Aren't the house rules important? Yes indeed, they are very important.
From Lesson 278:Negative questions (ألا / أليس ... بلى)·Arabic (Modern Standard)

Questions & Answers about أليست قواعد البيت مهمة؟ بلى، هي مهمة جدا.

Why do we use أليست here instead of ألا to mean 'aren't'?
The word أليس (and its feminine form أليست) is used before nouns and adjectives to ask 'isn't...?' or 'aren't...?'. It is a combination of the question word أ and the negative verb ليس (is not). You would use ألا before a regular verb to ask 'doesn't...?' or 'don't...?'.
Why does the reply use بلى instead of نعم for 'yes'?
When someone asks a negative question in Arabic, replying with نعم (yes) means you agree with the negative statement (meaning 'Yes, you are right, they are not important'). To contradict the negative and affirm that they ARE important, you must use بلى (yes indeed).
Why are we using feminine words like أليست and هي when talking about plural rules (قواعد)?
The word قواعد (rules) is a plural noun referring to non-human things. In Arabic grammar, non-human plurals are always treated as a single female. That is why we use the feminine أليست, the feminine pronoun هي (literally 'she'), and the feminine singular adjective مهمة.
In the first sentence, why doesn't قواعد have ال on it to say 'the' house rules?
This is an Idafa (possession or 'of' relationship) literally meaning 'the rules of the house'. In an Idafa, the first word (قواعد) never takes the prefix ال, but it is still understood as definite because the second word (البيت) is definite.
If I wanted to pronounce the full case endings on the word مهمة (important) in the first sentence, what would it be?
It would be مهمةً (muhimmatan) in the accusative case, because it is the predicate (the descriptive part) of the verb ليس. However, in the second sentence (هي مهمة), it is a regular subject-predicate sentence without ليس, so it takes the nominative case مهمةٌ (muhimmatun).

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