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What is the difference between "ʾeh dā ?" and &q

kellysensei
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Posts: 3
Joined: June 20th, 2008 4:54 pm

What is the difference between "ʾeh dā ?" and &q

Postby kellysensei » June 30th, 2010 7:13 pm

Can someone please explain to me the difference between the questions

ʾeh dā ? and
maa hatha?

Don't they both mean "what's this?" Are there situations where I should use one over the other?

jtleyba1844
New in Town
Posts: 4
Joined: June 12th, 2010 4:05 pm

Postby jtleyba1844 » July 4th, 2010 4:31 pm

Hi,

I haven't heard the phrase ʾeh dā ? But that doesn't mean anything since I've only been studying Arabic for about 8 months. Do you have the arabic script version of the phrase? I'd like to pop it into some translation software and see if it really comes back as What's This?

Is it possible it's a simplified version of maa hatha? Or maybe a local expresions, unique to a specific region?

Rach.

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kellysensei
New in Town
Posts: 3
Joined: June 20th, 2008 4:54 pm

re: what's this?

Postby kellysensei » July 4th, 2010 7:02 pm

إيه دا ؟

I saw "'eh da?" in newbie series season 2, lesson 14. The Arabic is above. I had only heard "maa hatha" before I saw this lesson...

jtleyba1844
New in Town
Posts: 4
Joined: June 12th, 2010 4:05 pm

Postby jtleyba1844 » July 5th, 2010 2:06 am

:? Well I'm stumped. I cut and pasted the script into two different translators. No English equivalent. When I removed the space between the two words, I got "Given Anything".

Soooo my guess is it's a local dialect thingy......

I'd be interested to see what the arabicpod101 staff has to say...

Rach.

kellysensei
New in Town
Posts: 3
Joined: June 20th, 2008 4:54 pm

Postby kellysensei » July 12th, 2010 2:47 pm

I actually heard my father-in-law same "eh di?" yesterday and he said it's an Egyptian dialect.

I wish there weren't so many dialects!!

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