المدينة كبيرة.

A common Levantine pronunciation is il-madiine kbiire or el-madiine kbiire.

A few helpful notes:

• الـ is often pronounced il- or el- in Levantine.
• مدينة sounds like madiine
• كبيرة sounds like kbiire
• The long ii sound is important in both words.

In faster speech, some speakers reduce vowels, so you may hear something closer to l-mdiine kbiire.

Because Arabic normally leaves out the verb to be in the present tense.

So in Levantine, sentences like this are very often just:

• المدينة كبيرة = The city is big

There is no separate word for is here.

But in other tenses, you do use a verb, for example:

• past: كانت المدينة كبيرة = The city was big
• future: المدينة رح تكون كبيرة = The city will be big

So this missing is is completely normal.

In Arabic, adjectives normally come after the noun they describe.

So:

• مدينة كبيرة = a big city
• المدينة كبيرة = the city is big

This is different from English, where adjectives usually come before the noun.

In your sentence, كبيرة comes after المدينة, which is exactly what you should expect in Arabic.

Because مدينة is a feminine noun, and the adjective has to agree with it.

So:

• masculine: كبير
• feminine: كبيرة

Since مدينة is feminine, the correct form is كبيرة.

This kind of agreement is very important in Arabic: adjectives usually match the noun in gender and number.

This is a very common question.

In المدينة كبيرة, كبيرة is the predicate of the sentence, so it does not take الـ.

Compare these two:

• المدينة كبيرة = The city is big
• المدينة الكبيرة = the big city

That difference is very important:

• without الـ on كبيرة: a full sentence
• with الـ on كبيرة: a noun phrase

So if you add الـ and say المدينة الكبيرة, you are no longer saying the city is big. You are saying the big city.

The final ة is called taa marbuuTa.

In everyday Levantine pronunciation, at the end of a word it usually sounds like -e (or sometimes -a, depending on accent and style), not like a full t.

So:

• مدينة → madiine
• كبيرة → kbiire

But when the word is followed in certain grammatical constructions, that ة can sound like t.

So for this sentence, you should pronounce both endings as something like -e, not -t.

Here, الـ is followed by م, and م is a moon letter, so the ل is pronounced normally.

That means the article is pronounced clearly:

• al-madiina in careful Standard Arabic
• usually il-madiine or el-madiine in Levantine

If the next letter were a sun letter, the ل would assimilate, but that does not happen here.

It is natural and understandable in Levantine too.

The spelling is basically the same as Standard Arabic, but the pronunciation is more colloquial in Levantine, for example:

• written: المدينة كبيرة
• spoken Levantine: il-madiine kbiire

So this is a good example of a sentence that works well in both Standard Arabic and spoken Levantine, even though the sound is different.

In Levantine, a very common way to negate this is with مش:

• المدينة مش كبيرة

That means the city is not big.

This is useful because once you understand المدينة كبيرة, you can make the negative version very easily by adding مش before the adjective.