Questions & Answers about الحكومة تغيرت.
In everyday Levantine, you might hear something like il-ḥkūme tghayyarit.
A few notes:
- الحكومة → il-ḥkūme
- تغيرت / تغيّرت → tghayyarit
Pronunciation varies a bit by region, so the exact vowels may shift, but that is a good practical approximation.
The writing works for both.
- In MSA, it would be understood as The government changed / has changed.
- In Levantine, people can use the same spelling, but the pronunciation is more colloquial and there are no case endings in speech.
So this is a nice example of a sentence that looks very similar across formal and spoken Arabic.
Because حكومة ends in ـة (the taa marbuuTa), which usually marks a feminine noun.
So even though government is not biologically female, it is grammatically feminine in Arabic. That is why the verb agrees with it in the feminine singular.