الوجهة في المدينة.

In Modern Standard Arabic, the verb to be is usually not expressed in the present tense.

So الوجهة في المدينة. naturally means The destination is in the city, even though there is no separate word for is.

This is very common in Arabic nominal sentences:

• البيت كبير. = The house is big.
• الكتاب على الطاولة. = The book is on the table.

If you wanted was or will be, Arabic would normally use a verb:

• كانت الوجهة في المدينة. = The destination was in the city.

A good pronunciation is:

al-wijha fi l-madīna

If you read it with full case endings in very careful MSA, it would be:

al-wijhatu fi l-madīnati

A few notes:

• الوجهة is usually pronounced al-wijha in pause.
• في is fī with a long ee sound.
• المدينة is al-madīna.
• In connected speech, after fī, the initial helping vowel of الـ drops, so you hear fi l-madīna.

Yes. In both الوجهة and المدينة, the l of الـ is pronounced.

That is because:

• و in الوجهة
• م in المدينة

are both moon letters, not sun letters.

So you say:

• al-wijha
• al-madīna

not forms with doubled consonants like you get with sun letters.

The ending ـة is called tāʾ marbūṭa.

It often marks a noun as grammatically feminine. In pause, it is usually pronounced like -a or -ah, which is why الوجهة sounds like al-wijha.

But in fully pronounced grammar, it can sound like -at when case endings are present:

• الوجهةُ = al-wijhatu

So this ending affects both:

• gender
• pronunciation

في means in, and it is a preposition. In Arabic, a preposition makes the following noun genitive.

So in full vocalization:

• في المدينةِ

The final -i sound on المدينةِ shows the genitive case.

In normal everyday Arabic writing, short vowels are usually omitted, so you often just see:

• في المدينة

without the case ending written.

الـ is the Arabic definite article, equivalent to the.

So:

• الوجهة = the destination
• المدينة = the city

This tells you both nouns are definite.

If you removed الـ, the meaning would become more like:

• وجهة في مدينة = a destination in a city

So the definite article is important for showing specificity.

Yes, الوجهة is grammatically feminine, mainly because it ends in ـة.

In this sentence, that does not create any visible agreement issue, because there is no adjective or verb showing gender.

But it would matter in other sentences. For example:

• الوجهة بعيدة. = The destination is far.

Here بعيدة is feminine to agree with الوجهة.

So even though gender is not very visible in this short sentence, it is still part of the noun’s grammar.

This is a nominal sentence in Arabic.

Its basic structure is:

• الوجهةُ = the subject/topic (mubtadaʾ)
• في المدينةِ = the predicate (khabar) in the form of a prepositional phrase

So literally, the structure is:

• The destination
  • in the city

And in natural English, that becomes:

• The destination is in the city

This kind of structure is extremely common in Arabic.

Yes, in isolation Arabic like this can sometimes be structurally ambiguous.

Without extra context, الوجهة في المدينة could be read as:

• a full sentence: The destination is in the city
• or a noun phrase: the destination in the city

Usually, context, punctuation, or the lesson’s intended meaning tells you which reading is meant.

Since your sentence is presented as a complete statement with a period, the intended reading is the full sentence.