Mubtada and Khabar are terms used for the subject and predicate of a nominal sentence. The mubtada is the topic of the sentence and the khabar is the comment. Distinguishing between the mubtada and khabar is essential to knowing where to place the copula is (or its versions) in the translation. In Zaid is a tall boy, the word Zaid is mubtada and the phrase a tall boy is the khabar. The copula is is dropped between the two.