الطفل جائع.

In Modern Standard Arabic, the present tense of to be is usually not stated.

So instead of saying The child is hungry with a separate word for is, Arabic simply says:

الطفل جائع

This is called a nominal sentence.
If you want the past or future, Arabic does use other words, for example:

• كان الطفل جائعًا = The child was hungry
• سيكون الطفل جائعًا = The child will be hungry

الـ is the Arabic definite article, meaning the.

So:

• طفل = a child / child
• الطفل = the child

In this sentence, الطفل is definite because it refers to the child.

Because جائع is the predicate of the sentence, not a noun being identified with the.

In الطفل جائع, the structure is:

• الطفل = the subject
• جائع = the description/predicate, hungry

Arabic usually leaves the predicate indefinite in simple sentences like this.

So:

• الطفل جائع = The child is hungry

If you said الطفل الجائع, that would mean the hungry child, which is a noun phrase, not a full sentence.

It functions like an adjective here, meaning hungry.

More specifically, جائع is a descriptive word that can be used:

• attributively: الطفل الجائع = the hungry child
• predicatively: الطفل جائع = the child is hungry

So in this sentence, it is acting as the predicate adjective.

A careful pronunciation is:

aṭ-ṭiflu jāʾiʿ

A few important notes:

• In الطفل, the ل of الـ is not pronounced normally here because ط is a sun letter. So الطفل sounds like aṭ-ṭifl rather than al-ṭifl.
• جائع contains:
  • a hamza: ʾ
  • an ʿayn: ʿ

So the second word is roughly jā-ʾi-ʿ.

In pause, the final short vowels are often not pronounced, so you may hear:

aṭ-ṭifl jāʾiʿ

In fully vocalized MSA, it is:

الطِّفْلُ جَائِعٌ

This shows the normal grammatical case endings:

• الطفلُ ends in -u because it is the subject
• جائعٌ ends in -un because it is an indefinite predicate

However, in normal Arabic writing, these short vowels are usually omitted, so you usually see:

الطفل جائع

And in normal speech, especially at the end of an utterance, those endings are often not clearly pronounced.

Because ط is a sun letter.

When الـ comes before a sun letter, the l sound of the article assimilates to the next consonant. So:

• written: الطفل
• pronounced: aṭ-ṭifl

The ط is effectively doubled in pronunciation.

This is a very common pattern in Arabic, for example:

• الشمس → ash-shams
• الناس → an-nās

Yes. In Arabic, descriptive words like this normally agree with the noun they describe in gender and number.

Here:

• الطفل is singular masculine
• جائع is also singular masculine

If the subject changed, the predicate would change too. For example:

• الطفلة جائعة = The girl is hungry
• الأطفال جائعون = The children are hungry

So agreement is important.

For a normal beginner sentence meaning The child is hungry, the standard order is:

الطفل جائع

Arabic can sometimes put the predicate first for emphasis or style, but that is not the most neutral basic pattern here.

So for learning purposes, stick with:

• الطفل جائع = normal, straightforward

Also, الطفل الجائع is different: that means the hungry child, not the child is hungry.

A common way is to use ليس:

الطفل ليس جائعًا
= The child is not hungry

Notice that جائع now takes a different case ending in fully vocalized Arabic:

• جائعٌ in الطفل جائع
• جائعًا in الطفل ليس جائعًا

In ordinary unvowelled writing, you will usually just see:

الطفل ليس جائعًا or الطفل ليس جائع

Yes. It is a completely normal and complete Arabic sentence.

Arabic often forms present-tense sentences with just:

• a subject
• a predicate

So الطفل جائع is fully complete and natural in MSA.

This is one of the basic sentence patterns Arabic learners see very early:

• الولد طويل = The boy is tall
• البيت كبير = The house is big
• الطفل جائع = The child is hungry