Questions & Answers about سن الطفل خمس سنين.
A natural Egyptian-style pronunciation is:
senn et-tefl khamas sineen
A few notes:
- سن here is pronounced senn or sinn.
- الطفل is not usually pronounced al-tifl in Egyptian. It comes out more like et-tefl.
- خ in خمس is the throaty sound heard in Scottish loch or German Bach.
- سنين is commonly pronounced sineen.
It literally means the child’s age or the age of the child.
This is a very common Arabic structure called iḍāfa (a noun + noun possession structure):
- سن = age
- الطفل = the child
So:
- سن الطفل = the child’s age
One important point: in this structure, the first noun usually does not take ال. So سن الطفل is correct, not السن الطفل.
Because in Arabic, present-tense sentences like this usually do not use a separate word for is / are.