bonsoir Good evening. ahlan Hi. بنسوار أهلا استاذ ما بتعرف انه الدخان موت بطيء؟ ومين قللك اني مستعجل؟ bonsoir ahlan éstaaz maa bta3ref inno éddékhhaan moot baTii2? w miin 2allek 2énni mista3jel? Good evening. Hi. Sir, don’t you know that smoking is a slow [and painful] death? (breathes out luxurious cloud of smoke) And who told you I was in a hurry? bonsoir – historically Lebanese people, especially the wealthy and educated, regularly spoke French and switched between French and Arabic. Even though French is probably being transplanted by English amongst young people, a lot of French words are still used even by people who don’t speak French at all. ...

As a student of Arabic it is only a matter of time before you encounter Lebanese pop star and feminist icon Nancy Ajram. Nancy (as she is generally known) is probably the most omnipresent icon of the Arab Pop scene, outselling even the equally Lebanese Najwa Karam, Elissa Khoury and Haifa Wehbe (that last one is… well, you could write a whole dissertation on that song).Thanks to Lebanon’s thriving trade in plastic surgery (عمليات تجميل) it can be sort of difficult to tell them all apart, but Nancy’s face is instantly recognised – and adored – worldwide. Wherever there is a grimy shisha café playing Rotana Clip on a wall-mounted TV, there Nancy will be in the midst of them. ...

This guest post was written by Hossam Abouzahr, the man behind The Living Arabic Project (www.livingarabic.com), a compilation of multiple dialect and Fusha dictionaries that contains the largest Egyptian dialect dictionary and (what will hopefully soon be) the largest Levantine dialect dictionary. A half-breed (Arab-American), he found out that Arabic is actually beautiful after escaping from Arabic classes and meeting cool teachers who introduced him to the fun side of the language. ...

Talking about emigration Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be aware of the mounting ~migration crisis~ in Europe, where much debate has been triggered by a wave of Syrian (and non-Syrian, but they don’t get much press) refugees who made their way across Europe from Greece and have ended up in countries all over the place. Although this became a big media issue this year, the idea of seeking refuge abroad is not a new one for Syrians – they were talking about it when I was in Jordan two years ago, and I’m sure they were talking about it before that, too. Debates about the best country to try and claim asylum in are a frequent source of conversation, and they’ve now made their way into TV series (which are beginning to talk more and more about the plight of refugees, unlike the musalsalaat of the early days of the war which tended to completely ignore what was going on). So in that spirit, here is a short clip from one of this year’s Ramadan musalsalaat, غدا نلتقي Ghadan Naltaqi. The series focuses on an abandoned building in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, which has been taken over by Syrian refugees looking for somewhere to live. This scene is from the first episode. ...

Hello, I’m joining Caitlyn and Chris representing Team Fatima Zahra, the little-known (but very cool) Moroccan cousin of Maha and Nisreen…okay, so obviously al-Kitaab never gave us a Moroccan version of our favourite crowd-phobic Egyptian. And that’s probably because students of Arabic are usually warned off Moroccan, even/especially by other Arabs. The most common responses I got when telling people I was studying Arabic in Morocco were “You’re learning French,” “come back to Jordan when you want to learn real Arabic”, and “you’re learning African” (…okay). ...

Transcription of an interview with a surprisingly satisfied hijack-ee. With Cyprus, planes and nervous laughter.

This is a post about one of the most useful, common, and under-appreciated verbs in Levantine Arabic: طلع (‪Téle3 yéTla3). Perhaps because it is so difficult to pronounce (i and 3ayn and Taa2 all in one word!!!), and because it is little-used in MSA, I’ve encountered many people who would never even think to use it (in spite of taking colloquial lessons in Levantine-speaking countries) and even those people who do know it are only familiar with it in one or two of its most common uses. Its opposite, نزل (nézel byénzel) is also used in several related meanings, as are these two verbs’ form II causatives; we’ll cover all of them in this post. Although my examples, as usual, are pretty much exclusively Syrian/Lebanese, most of these senses are also used in many other dialects. ...

The first Yasser al-Adma transcription, the Telegram, featuring an irascible sheikh and preposition-based poetry.

Téle3 and nézel are two of those verbs that keep popping out (or if you will, yéTla3-ing, hohohoho) of native speakers’ mouths but that never seem to get defined anywhere – UNTIL NOW.

I’m going to posit that بتاع – ‘thingy, thingamajig, whatever’ – is one of the most important words in Egyptian Arabic. It has several flexible grammatical uses and is thrown around constantly; the word is especially important for Arabic learners because you can expand your vocabulary tenfold by just replacing words you don’t know with this convenient linguistic evasion. Yes, it is a cop out, but whatthefuckever! Egyptians use it copiously anyways and you’ll fit right in. Anyways. How it works: ...