Lesson 11

What are these/those?

We have learnt how to say: “What is this?” And “What is that?” Now, it is time to learn how to formulate these questions in plural.

If you think a little, you will know how to formulate them. No problem, if you do not know them. Let me explain this matter.

We know that “What are” is “ايه” and “These/Those” are “دول”. So, this question will be as below:

English	Arabic	Pronunciation
What are these/those?	ايه دول؟

Let’s take some examples:

English	Arabic	Pronunciation
What are these/those?	ايه دول؟
These are telephones	دول تليفونات
Those are magazines	دول مجلات
These are newspapers	دول جرايد
Those are trees	دول شجر
These are birds	دول طيور
Those are animals	دول حيوانات
These are people	دول ناس

I hear you say: “You gave me some new nouns in plural form, and you did not give me them in singular form”.

Sorry, I have forgotten. Forgive me, please. Here are their singular forms:

English	Arabic	Pronunciation
Telephone	تليفون
Magazine	مجلة
Newspaper	جرنان
Bird	طائر

We have learnt how to say: “This is a book”, “These are books”, and so on. But what if I want to say: “This book is….” or “These books are…”

In this case I will say them in this way:

English	Arabic	Pronunciation
This book is good	الكتاب ده كويس
This notebook is good	الكراسة دى كويسة
These books are good	الكتب دى كويسة
Those notebooks are good	الكراريس دى كويسة
That house is huge	البيت ده ضخم
This building is huge	العمارة دى ضخمة
These houses are huge	البيوت دى ضخمة
Those buildings are huge	العمارات دى ضخمة
This man is bad	الرجل ده وحش
That woman is bad	الست دى وحشه
These people are bad	الناس دى وحشه

Remember: As you see, the pronunciation of adjectives is associated with the gender type of subject. “بيت” is masculine, so I said “بيت ضخم”. “عمارة” is feminine, so I said “عمارة ضخمة”. There is another thing maybe you have noticed, in plural form I did not use “دول”, but I used “دى”, so that I used the feminine form of the adjective, like “الكتب دى كويسة”, “الكراريس دى كويسة”, and so on. But we can also use “دول”. I will teach you the adjectives later.