أَلَيْسَ is not in Arabic
أَلَيْسَ is how you say “is not” in Arabic.
Arabic
English
The audio uses AI voices.
Example sentence
قَالَ أَلَيْسَ كَانَ يَقُولُهَا فِي حَيَاتِهِ ؟
He said, "Didn't he use to say it in his lifetime?"
أَلْيْسَ is not
A question-word built from a questioning a- fused with the negated 'to be', producing 'is it not...?'. Its job is to launch a rhetorical question that expects a 'yes', nudging the listener toward agreement rather than truly asking. So the negation here is doing persuasive, not denying, work.
The English is machine-translated.
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More example sentences
قَالَ أَلَيْسَ قَدْ حَمَلْتُهَا عَلَى ظَهْرِي، وَحَبَسْتُ نَفْيًا عَلَيْهَا؟
Did I not already carry her on my back and spare her from exile?
أَلَيْسَ is it not
This stacks the question-marker with a negation, forming a rhetorical 'is it not the case that...?' that expects agreement rather than information. It does not genuinely ask; it presses the listener to concede the obvious. So it sets up the man's self-defense as something he assumes is already granted.