Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Female name endings in Arabic

  Tags: Names | Arabic
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
flabbergasted
Triglot
Groupie
Latvia
Joined 6362 days ago

75 posts - 97 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Latvian
Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Serbo-Croatian, Catalan, Persian

 
 Message 1 of 5
14 September 2009 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 

If I need to transcribe a female name ending in 'a' in Arabic, will I transcribe it by
alif or by ta-marbuta? Examples of the name: Anna, Monica, Christina. Thanks in advance!
1 person has voted this message useful



Cabaire
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5605 days ago

725 posts - 1352 votes 

 
 Message 2 of 5
14 September 2009 at 11:01pm | IP Logged 
Look here for "Anna":

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070914083919AA 3pqdc
1 person has voted this message useful



snoppingasusual
Quadrilingual Hexaglot
Groupie
Lebanon
Joined 5573 days ago

49 posts - 65 votes 
Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian), French*, English*, Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (Levantine)*, Spanish

 
 Message 3 of 5
17 September 2009 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
Firstly, I would never trust online content. I have visited several sites that attempt to teach you Arabic, and I have found that half of them are absurdly inaccurate. This is not the case in this short Yahoo! question, but I do not advise you to study Arabic online.

Anyway, I did not quite comprehend your question, but here goes my attempt at figuring it out: Anna = آنّـا, Monica = مونيكا, Christina = كريستينا

To translate English names, you just have to know the Arabic alphabet. However, there are some exceptions. Also, آنّـا is the way it is because the removal of the ّ would make it the first person pronoun.

The Arabic ة is used when you make a noun feminine, but that is not the way you translate English names into Arabic, for proper nouns are translated letter by letter, though, some exceptions exist. Here are some examples of the usage of the Arabic ة:

كلبٌ (Dog, chien, perro, masculine), (Dog, chienne, perra, feminine) ٌكلبةٌ

مراهقٌ (Adolescent, adolescent, adolescente, masculine), مراهقةٌ (Adolescent, adolescente, adolescente, feminine)

Good luck with your studies,

Snoppingasusual.

Edited by snoppingasusual on 17 September 2009 at 1:56am

2 persons have voted this message useful



Al-Malik
Bilingual Heptaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
arabicgenie.com
Joined 7140 days ago

221 posts - 294 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: English*, German*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French, Arabic (classical)
Studies: Mandarin, Persian

 
 Message 4 of 5
17 September 2009 at 11:04am | IP Logged 
One thing to notice about translating names into Arabic is that all the vowels in the original name will usually be transcribed as long vowels in the Arabic version. As shoppingasusual rightly points out "Monica" would become "مونيكا" (mooneekaa) even though the "i" in "Monica" is definitely a short vowel in the original and short vowels are not written in Arabic (except for harakaat in some situations).

The reason for this phenomenon (short vowel in original name => long vowel in Arabic name) is that Arabic speakers may not be too familiar with Western names and it would cause confusion to merely write "مونكا" or even "منكا" - some people might not recognize these two as names, let alone be able to pronounce them correctly.
3 persons have voted this message useful



flabbergasted
Triglot
Groupie
Latvia
Joined 6362 days ago

75 posts - 97 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Latvian
Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin, Serbo-Croatian, Catalan, Persian

 
 Message 5 of 5
20 September 2009 at 9:41pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the responses. Much obliged!


1 person has voted this message useful



If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3105 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.