Homsood is an internet presence (originally, I think, a youtuber) who produces a weekly 20 minute review dealing with media, usually recent musalsalaat, with a tone of eternal incredulity. He does an excellent job of spearing the often tortured plots and heavy-handed propagandising involved in Arabic-language drama, and his episodes are always pretty funny – especially, of course, if you’ve watched the TV shows in question. He’s always worth a watch, both for language and for content.
This particular clip is taken from an episode about a Syrian TV initiative to bring in a flow of ‘new blood’ and rejuvenate the news. I chose it because he makes a couple of interesting observations about language (allowing me to make interesting observations about the language he uses to make interesting observations about language), and as part of a broader attempt to look at the use of language outside scripted domestic contexts that we began with al-Ittijah al-Mu3aakis. Although Homsood is obviously not a political show discussing the issues of the day in highfalutin language, this is not at all to say that he speaks exclusively in 3aammi style. Like anyone else presenting an argument, he uses fuSHa for comic and rhetorical effect – and is a useful example of how people do that in real life.
As is suggested by his name, Homsood is from Homs. Although he doesn’t have a super strong accent, his way of speaking is certainly different from Damascenes. Something else to look out for!
كمان نحنا لازم نكون حياديين
kamaan ni7na laazem @nkuun 7ayaadiyyiin
But we should also be neutral
nkuun, obviously, subjunctive because of laazem. He’s referring here to a previous section.
هاي اخطاء فريق الاعداد
haay 2akhTaa2 farii2 il2i3daad
These are mistakes made by the production team.
هاي – not for presentation, but the feminine (less commonly haadi)
الاعداد – literally ‘preparation’
يمكن فريق الاعداد ما فيو ضخ دماء جديدة
yumken farii2 il2i3daad maa fiyyo Dakhkh dimaa2 jadiidi
Maybe the production team hasn’t had this ‘infusion of new blood’.
ما فيو – in Damascene this would probably be maa fii, but lots of people have this either as their exclusive form for bi + -o or as an alternative form. This is a sort of pseudoverbal use – ‘to have in it’. You couldn’t say maa bfarii2 il2i3daad Dakhkh – you have to use a form with a pronoun on it.
ضخ – the maSdar from ‘pump’ (ضخ يضخ Dakhkh yDekhkh)
دماء – the somewhat poetic plural of ‘blood’
jadiidi – in Damascene this would be jdiide. I’m not sure whether the a is a Homsi thing or a fuSHa thing.
ما دخل فيه المذيعين! لإنو انا متأكد انو في عندون مذيعين جيدين يليقو بهذه الانطلاقة الجديدة
maa dakhal fii lmuzii3iin! la2enno 2ana mit2akked 2inno fii 3indon muzii3iin jayyidiin yaliiqu bihaazi l2inTilaaqa ljadiidi
What do the presenters have to do with it? Because I’m sure that they’ll have good presenters worthy of this ‘new start’
maa dakhal X b- Y – ‘X has nothing to do with Y’. Easiest not to try and break down the exact role of dakhal here – it’s a frozen form that also appears in shu dakhal X b- Y ‘what’s X got to do with Y’ but not, that I can think of, anywhere else, and never changes shape (shu dakhalni ‘what’s it got to do with me?’) Here the normal order is switched around because b-, rather than being followed by a noun, has a pronoun (though maa dakhal ilmuzii3iin fii sounds okay too).
yaliiqu bihaazi – a mixed fuSHa-colloquial form. It doesn’t have a b- and the prefix is ya-, not y-, but the plural ending is a simple -u (rather than yaliiquun(a) as in fuSHa). Note as well the pronunciation of هذه as haazi.
هلق اخبارنا بقول تنتج حرير العنكبوت بعد تعديل دودة القز جينيا
halla2 2akhbaarna bi2uul tuntej 7ariir al3ankabuut ba3da ta3diil duudet ilqazz jiiniyyan
We now have news that spiders are producing silk after genetic modification of silkworms…
Note the weird shaamified fuSHa pronunciation – duudet not duudat, il- not al-. This is a presenter who probably didn’t do very well in their fuSHa classes in school.
تنتج حرير العنكبوت – the subject here is العنكبوت, which is feminine (the suffix -uut, apparently from Aramaic, is feminine)
دودة القز – silkworm. Note the use of the singular + definite here for generic (whereas ‘the silkworm’ in English would usually be a specific silkworm)
التعديل جينيا – literally ‘modification, genetically’
يعني واذا اذا المذيعة خربطت وما قالت الخبر كامل ونقصت اهم شي؟
ya3ni w2iza 2iza lmuzii3a kharbaTet w maa 2aalet ilkhabar kaamel w na22aSet 2ahamm shi?
I mean, so what if the presenter got mixed up and didn’t say the whole story, and missed out the most important thing?
واذا wiza, w2iza – Literally ‘and if…?’ With this specific intonation, though, it means ‘so what?’ Followed by a normal 2iza which allows for the ‘if the presenter got mixed up’.
خربط – a very useful verb. خربط بين سين وصاد = he got confused/mixed up between X and Y.
كامل – obviously an adverb here, ‘in full’
نقص – a causative, literally ‘to make fall short/to make miss’, but here obviously ‘miss out, leave out’.
عزيزي المشاهد, هنه بيكتبولك الخبر كمان حتى انت تحركلي حالك وتقرى كمان
3aziizi lmushaahed. hinne bik@tbuulak ilkhabar kamaan 7atta 2inte t7arrikli 7aalak w ti2ra kamaan
My dear viewer. They write the news for you as well so that you can be a bit proactive and read it too!
حرك حالك – ‘move yourself’, i.e. be proactive, be active, make a bit of effort.
يعني ما منطق المذيعة تعمللك كل شي
ya3ni maa manTeq ilmuzii3a ta3millak kull shi
I mean, it wouldn’t make sense for the presenter to have to do everything for you!
ما متطق – it wouldn’t be logic. ما is used by Homsis (and people from other parts of Syria) as an all-purpose negator, standing in for muu/mish as well as negating verbs.
يعني كمان انت لازم تقرى الخبر الموجود بالشاشة
ya3ni kamaan 2inte laazem ti2ra lkhabar ilmawjuud bishshaashe
You have to read the story written on the screen as well!
حنكون معكون مع اشرائة الشمس كل يوم
7ankuun ma3kon ma3 2ishraa2et éshshams kéll yoom
We’ll be with you from daybreak every day
حـ – a variant of course on رح, رايح, لح etc
اشراقة الشمس – literally ‘the shining of the sun’
حنحاول اكيد نوصل لاعماق قلوبكون ونبعث بضوها لنخترق عباق السما
7an7aawel 2akiid nuuSal la2a3maa2 @2luubkon w néb3ath biDawwa lanékhtere2 3abaa2 éssama
We’ll try of course to reach the depths of your hearts, and spread its light until we pierce the cloak of the sky
عباء – maybe? Homsood also isn’t sure what she’s trying to say here!
عزيزتي المذيعة انا بعرف انو المخرج قايللك انو لازم بالتليفزيون العالم تحكي اللهجة البيضا
3aziizti lmuzii3a 2ana ba3ref 2inno lmukhrej 2aayillek 2inno laazem bittelefizyoon il3aalem ti7ki llahje lbeeDa
My dear presenter, I know that the director told you that on TV people are supposed to speak with a nice accent
قايللك – participle of قال, of course. ‘Has told you’
العالم – ‘people’. عالم and خلق khél@2 are both used to mean ‘people’, usually with feminine singular agreement.
اللهجة البيضا – ‘white dialect’, or maybe ‘pure dialect’. Refers more or less to the equivalent of what we call BBC English – the fancy, soft way of talking that is characteristic of TV presenters and certain other social groups.
بس اشرائة الشمس ما حدا بيحكيها
bass ‘2ishraa2et ishshams’ maa 7ada byi7kiiha
But nobody pronounces it 2ishraa2et ishshams
He’s objecting to overuse of the glottal stop in place of qaaf. In Syrian many, many higher-register words retain qaaf rather than losing it, and changing them into a hamze risks making you (a learner or especially a native) sound a) silly, b) childish, c) effeminate and cutesy, or d) Lebanese (and unfortunately for Lebanese people, the three former stereotypes get applied to them, too).
ما حدا بيحكيها – note that the object of this (2ishraa2et ishshams) is moved to the beginning of the sentence as topic and replaced by a feminine object pronoun on the verb. I don’t think this has anything to do with the fact that 2ishraa2a is itself feminine, but that sentences and words are generally treated as feminine when referred to paralinguistically like this.
اسمها اشراقة الشمس. قد ما حبيتي تطلعي بيضا
2isma 2ishraaqet ishshams. 2add ma 7abbeeti tiTla3i beeDa
It’s2ishraaqet ishshams, no matter how nice you want to sound.
اسمها – ‘its name is’ can be used much more broadly than its literal English equivalent.
قد ما حبيتي – ‘no matter how much you want to…’ This is 2add ma, ‘however much’, which typically triggers past, followed by 7abb in its meaning of ‘would like’ or ‘want’.
تطلعي – this is one of the many meanings of Tile3, similar to how you say طلعت كتير حلو بالصورة to someone you’ve just taken a photo of.
اشراقة الشمس. واعماق قلوبكون هادا ما هادا ما حديث ما قصة مانو لغة هادا ما منطق
2ishraaqet ishshams. w 2a3maa2 @2luubkon… haada ma, haada ma 7adiis maa 2iSSet maano lugha haada maa manTiq
2ishraaqet ishshams. And as for 2a3maa2 @2luubkon… This isn’t a matter, this isn’t a case of it not being proper language, this isn’t even logical
قصة – literally, as every Arabic student knows, ‘story’, but very common in colloquial to mean ‘a matter of’ (among other things – ما عندي هيك قصص ‘I wouldn’t do that sort of thing’, وكذا وقصص ‘and so on and so forth’, القصة مو هيك ‘it’s not like that’). It can be placed in iDaafe, in defiance of fuSHa logic, with a normal full sentence, here maano lugha ‘it isn’t (proper) language’.
اسما اعماق قلوبكم او اعماق قلوبكون بتمشي على حالا هيك
2isma 2a3maaq quluubikum 2aw 2a3maaq 2uluubkon btimshi 3ala 7aala heek
It’s 2a3maaq quluubikum. Or 2a3maaq 2uluubkon, that’s how it works
Either the fuSHa form fully, or the fuSHa pronunciation of اعماق with the 3aami pronunciation of قلوب.
ونخترئ اعماق السما بصراحة ما في هيك قصة
w nikhtere2 2a3maa2 issama bSaraa7a maa fii heek 2iSSa
And nikhtere2 2a3maa2 issama… Seriously, there’s no such thing.
بصراحة – honestly, sincerely
ما في هيك قصة – another related meaning of قصة.
اعماق السما – I actually hear her saying عباء السما ‘the coat of the sky’, but this doesn’t seem to be a common expression even if it could be a poetic stretch.
هي نخترق كلمة نخترق كلمة نخترق فبدا كل حروفها بدها الخيه والكيه الخاء والقاء
hiyye nikhtereq, kilmet nikhtereq… nikhtereq. fa bidda kull 7uruufa. bidda lkhee wilqee, ilkhaa2 wilqaa2
Nikhtereq, the word nikhtereq, it’s… nikhtereq. It needs all its letters pronouncing. It needs the khee and the qee, the khaa2 and the qaa2.
خيه وقيه – it is common for Syrians, particularly those who’ve lived in Turkey, to use the sound of the letter plus ee to describe a letter alongside the real names (qaa2 of course isn’t the real name of the letter qaaf either)
بدها – ‘it needs’. A very useful use of biddha.
اعماق هاي ليكي نحنا ما منعرف يا اعباء يا اعماق يا عباء بصراحة ما مفهومة
2a3maa2… haay leeki ni7na maa mna3ref yaa 2a3baa2 yaa 2a3maaq yaa 3abaa2 biSaraa7a maa mafhuumi
And a3maa2… this, well, we don’t know it. Either 2a3baa2, or 2a3maaq, or 3abaa2 – honestly, it’s not comprehensible.
ليك, ليكي, ليكو – ‘look’, or ‘here is’, or ‘here comes’. Here it’s feminine for the presenter.
يا… يا… – ‘either… or…’ or just a string of ors.
ما مفهومة – this is a use of the passive participle with an -able meaning – ‘incomprehensible’.
بدنا نفهم عليكي الله يخليلي ياكي
biddna nifham 3aleeki aLLa ykhalliili yaaki
We want to understand you, please!
نفهم عليكي – in Shaami fihem typically takes 3ala with people, but can take direct objects with other things – بدي افهم عليك حديثك ‘I want to understand what you’re saying’.
الله يخليلي ياكي – literally ‘may God keep you for me!’ but ‘for me’ makes the English sound stronger, I think, than the Arabic. This is here just a slightly dramatic way of saying ‘please’, similar to ‘for goodness’ sake!’ You can do this with a lot of formulaic good wishes – another common one is الله يرضى عليك ‘may God be pleased with you’.
حنكون معكون مع اشرائة الشمس كل يوم
7ankuun ma3kon ma3 2ishraa2et éshshams kéll yoom
We’ll be with you from daybreak every day
حنحاول اكيد نوصل لاعماق قلوبكون ونبعث بضوها لنخترق عباق السما
7an7aawel 2akiid nuuSal la2a3maa2 @2luubkon w néb3ath biDawwa lanékhtere2 3abaa2 éssama
We’ll try of course to reach the depths of your hearts, and spread its light until we pierce the cloak of the sky
طيب ما في مذيعين غير هدول؟ معقول؟
Tayyeb maa fii muzii3iin gheer hadool? ma32uul?
OK, are there no other presenters? really?
طيب – here in its meaning ‘OK’. Some people say طب Tabb (I think this is mainly southern Levantine)
غير – ‘other than’
معقول – ‘[is it] reasonable?’ a very common expression