Hi everyone, This post is about a very common – and misleading – particle, the word قال ‪2aal. You will almost certainly have encountered this word already as the normal way of saying ‘say’ or ‘tell’: قللي ما في حدا بالبيت 2alli maa fii 7ada bilbeet he said there wasn’t anyone at home But what we’re talking about here is something different, something you might have encountered without even realising it. In this use, 2aal is an invariable particle. Although it looks like ‘he said’, it has no subject in the normal sense of the term. Instead, it marks second-hand information. If you ask me why Nour doesn’t want to go and see a film, I can say: ...

Hi everyone! I saw Faraj Suleiman in concert a week or so ago, and I thought it would be nice to transcribe something written within my lifetime for a change. Halfway through I realised that there’s a fairly gnarly swearword, which I normally try to avoid. So this post comes with a big old profanity warning and strong advice not to use this word until you’re sure you aren’t going to use it inappropriately (we’ve all been there). ...

Wow, it’s been a long time! For our first post in over a year, let’s look at a political song that feels particularly relevant now (or maybe is always relevant): رئيس الجمهورية (‘President’) by خالد الهبر Khalid Il Habre (that’s how he spells it in English, don’t look at me), a Lebanese protest singer. I hope his lyrics make up for the dryness of my content. The video is available here. If you prefer, you can watch a version performed live on a TV show with two extremely pained-looking hosts – one of whom, Adel Karam, you may remember as the star of one of my earliest posts (although he had a better hairline then). ...

Hello everyone. Apologies for yet another long absence – I’ve been working on something pretty big that I’ll be able to tell you more about soon. But to tide you over, here’s a post about a verb (or two verbs, in fact) that you probably know in one sense but don’t realise the full potential of. Dialects رجع is used universally. رد is used only in North Levantine in the senses described below (although it is a very common verb in other more literal senses such as ‘answer’). ...

This post is about a high-frequency structure that you’re unlikely to learn in your 3aammiyye classes but which is, conveniently, the title of an El Morabba3 song: ليكون laykuun. Dialects In all Levantine dialects ليكون can be used as an invariable expression. Historically, however, it is a contraction of لا يكون laa ykuun ‘let it not be‘ – that is, a negative subjunctive form of the verb كان. In North Levantine, conjugated forms sometimes appear in the same meaning: لا تكون راجع لهون laa tkuun raaje3 lahoon ‘I hope you’re not coming back here’. In the rest of this post for the purposes of simplicity I’ll only be using laykuun. ...

This is a post about a common, and commonly misused, word – تعبان ta3baan. First things first. Grammatically, تعبان is an -aan participle, which we’ve previously talked about here. Like many other participles, it refers to the state resulting from a verb – in this case تعب ti3eb/yit3ab. This verb has a causative with its own participle (تعّب ta33ab, متعب mta33eb). There’s also an adjective derived from the same root with a related meaning, متعب mit3eb/mut3eb. These forms do not differ significantly from dialect to dialect. ...

Today’s post is about two very useful words, لكان and ولا. Dialects The general rule is that لكان is used in North Levantine, while ولا is used in South Levantine (note that ولا in the sense of ‘or’, which we talked about a bit in this post, is used everywhere and isn’t the subject of this post). لكان is also used in northern Palestine. Note that lakaan and willa do not entirely overlap – some of the uses of lakaan do not have willa equivalents. ...

Apologies for the radio silence, guys – I was away for the summer and I’ve been working on various side-projects. But now we’re back. This post is another addition to our Verbs I Might Have Known series (for other episodes, see زبط , اجى, طلع, نزل, صار, نفسي and قعد), this time about possibly the most common and useful catch-all verb in spoken Arabic, عمل. ...

A slightly late post in our Verbs I Might Have Known series. This one is about اخد ‪2akhad, a verb we certainly all know. Compared to previous verbs in this series, 2akhad has less core or auxiliary meanings, but it does appear in a lot of common and useful combined phrases which we’ll cover here. Dialect forms اخد’s past form is the same everywhere, 2akhad. Its present forms, however, vary: in North Levantine they have a consistent long aa in the prefixes that absorbs the hamze (baakhod, btaakhod, byaakhod…) and in South Levantine they have a long oo except in the first person singular, where they have aa (baakhod, btookhod etc). The imperative forms in NL are khood, khədi, khədu, while SL has similar forms but (as expected) doesn’t have the shift of short u/i to ə, producing khood, khudi, khudu . Occasionally you might hear the shortened forms خو kho, خي khi and خو khu. The participle in NL is regular (2aakhed) but in SL is irregular, with m (ماخد maakhed). ...

Another post in our ‘verbs I might have known’ series (طلع/نزل, بدو, اجى, زبط) s about flexible, useful and common verbs that you probably know but might not realise the true power of. This week’s entry is on قعد ‪2a3ad, literally ‘sit’. Dialects As usual, let’s get the different dialect forms out of the way first. All dialects allow 2a3ad in the past tense, although some North Levantine speakers may have 2ə3ed instead. The present tense form for everyone has o. In North Levantine this means yə23od, and in South Levantine yu23od with the vowel harmony talked about here. ...