الشقق مختلفة.

apartment

Breakdown of الشقق مختلفة.

• مختلف: different

Questions & Answers about الشقق مختلفة.

How do I pronounce الشقق مختلفة?

A useful learner pronunciation is:

ash-shuqaq mukhtalife

A few notes:

• الش is pronounced ash-sh or ish-sh, not al-sh
• In many Levantine accents, ق is often pronounced as a glottal stop, so the first word may sound closer to ish-shu’aʔ
• مختلفة is often heard as mukhtilfe or mukhtalfe in everyday Levantine speech

So the exact sound depends on the region, but the written sentence is the same.

Why is there no word for are in this sentence?

Because in Arabic, present-tense sentences like this usually do not use a separate word for is/are.

So:

الشقق مختلفة
literally looks like
the apartments different

but it means:

the apartments are different

This is very normal in both Levantine and Standard Arabic.

If you wanted the past, you would usually add a form of كان:

كانت الشقق مختلفة = the apartments were different

Why is مختلفة feminine singular even though الشقق is plural?

This is one of the most important grammar patterns in Arabic:

Non-human plural nouns are very often treated grammatically as .