Whenever a poorly-written Wikipedia article wants to demonstrate the differences between dialects or dialects and fuSHa, it usually lists the forms of the pronouns, the question words, the negative particle and a few basic items of vocabulary to illustrate their diversity. Shami is not the furthest dialect from fuSHa here, but there are important differences. Pronouns The independent (منفصل) pronouns in Shami are as follows: انا ana انت inta/inte ...

Vowels The actual exact pronunciation of the vowels in Levantine is, as in English, one of the many indicators of regional dialect. The most important thing for an initial learner is trying to approximate the sounds and keep the various different vowels distinct. You can worry about getting them closer to native pronunciation later when you have people to imitate. Length One of the most important things to worry about is length – you have to make your long vowels longer than your short vowels. The five long vowels are aa ii uu ee oo (ee and oo correspond to ay and aw in fuSHa and probably sound to you, if you are a native English speaker, like the vowels in ‘late’ and ‘wrote’ and should not be confused with our vowels in ‘beet’ and ‘boot’). ...

If you’ve already learnt the basics of fuSHa – as most Arabic learners who start studying dialect have – then you already have a decent basis from which to approach colloquial Levantine (Shami). In many respects Levantine is closer to fuSHa than other dialects – the stress system is very similar, the sound systems are close to one another and there often isn’t that much difference between a Levantine word and its fuSHa equivalent. ...

Our previous post was on replacing diin with diib to produce a more family-friendly version of various swear words. This is not the only example of this phenomenon in Arabic (apparently called a ‘minced oath‘, if you like that sort of thing) – at least in Syrian Arabic. One of the first swear words you learn in Arabic is of course خرا khara ‘shit’. This is not the most offensive word available in the broad canon of swear words, but it’s still not TV-friendly or acceptable in polite company. Just as diin (‘religion’) can be minced into diib (‘wolf’), khara can be minced into hawa (‘wind’). This happens most commonly in the various forms of أكل خرا (literally ‘to eat shit’), which has different meanings depending on context: ...

One of the most offensive kinds of swearing (at least to many people) in Arabic involves cursing religion. I wouldn’t recommend trying out the original, religion-bashing versions of these lines with the vast majority of people you’re likely to encounter, even as a joke. That said, just as English speakers inventively butchered the originally taboo ‘oh my God’ (‘oh my gosh/goodness’) and ‘shit’ (‘sugar’ and ‘shoot’ among others), lots of Syrians substitute diib (wolf) for diin: ...

قال في تنين فقراء ماشيين بلطريق 2aal fii tneen fé2ara maashyiin bi-TTarii2 Once there were two poor guys walking along the street 2aal – 2aal on its own is used to mean ‘they say that’, or ‘once upon a time’ without any obvious subject. fé2ara – plural of fa2iir ‘poor’. MSA would call for the dual here (faqiiraan), but in colloquial we can use tneen with a plural in the same meaning (fa2iireen could also be used here without any change in the meaning). ...

The Syrian revolution is now in its sixth painful year with no sign of a resolution any time soon. Five years ago exactly, the regime’s tanks occupied the city centre of Hama after a month-long siege which claimed the lives of more than 200 civilians. Today’s transcription is the famous revolutionary song Get Out Bashar, sung by thousands in mass protests at the heart of Hama weeks before the tanks rolled in and still popular today. ...

من تحت راسك mén ta7@t raasak Not a comment on the location of your neck, but instead a dramatic way of saying ‘it’s all because of you!’ or ‘it’s all your fault!’ Initial estimates suggest this expression is used in at least 105% of Syrian dramas. كل اللي صار من تحت راسك! Everything that’s happened is because of you! ...

كانت رامية ودن معانا ‘She was eavesdropping on us.’ As though unnamed woman was so desperate to hear your conversation, she went all van Gogh on your shit, ripped her ear off, and then threw it in your general direction. It is times like these I wish TeamMaha had a cartoonist.

Or ‘ass’, for our American readers. In the course of your studies, especially if you study Levantine, you may have encountered the charming Palestinian expression بكرا بالمشمش bukra bilmishmish, ‘tomorrow with the apricots’, or in short بالمشمش ‘with the apricots’. This is a pleasantly folksy and agricultural way of saying, essentially, ‘it’ll never happen’. According to the supervisor who taught us the expression way back when, this is because apricots have a very brief and unpredictable ripening time (? I’m not a farmer). It probably also depends a bit for its effect on the fact that mishmish literally means ‘notnot’. ...