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.
Even if you’ve only taken a few steps along the road to perdition that is learning fuS7a, you’ll probably know this verb in the meaning of ‘work’ (if you’ve done even one chapter of the Al Kitaab series, it’s what Maha’s dad does at the UN). In Levantine, however, its meaning has shifted to a generic ‘do’ or ‘make’. Many of its derivations – e.g. 3aamel ‘labourer’, ‘factor’ (plurals 3ummaal and 3awaamel respectively) – do still carry meanings to do with work. But the verb itself is used in a thousand and one different contexts, which we’ll try and give a representative taster of in this post.
Dialect forms
In Syrian/Lebanese the past tense is عمل 3əmel, conjugated normally. In Palestinian/Jordanian it is the predictable equivalent 3imel (see the PDF for conjugation). In the present there is much more variation: in South Levantine the form is entirely regular (yi3mel, bi3mel, bti3mel etc). In North Levantine, the prefix vowel has an irregular a; in Syrian the stem vowel is e (bta3mel) and in Lebanese the vowel is o (bta3mol). The maSdar is عمل 3amal.
Do, make (and ‘have’)
For speakers of languages other than English the difference between ‘do’ and ‘make’ is generally fairly mysterious. Luckily for you, in Arabic this difference does not really exist. While it would (of course) be an exaggeration to claim عمل can be used in every single case where ‘do’ or ‘make’ is appropriate in English, it certainly is the best catch-all equivalent:
شو عم تعمل؟
shuu 3am ta3mel? (S)
What are you doing?
ايش عامل اليوم؟
2eesh 3aamel ilyoom? (P)
What are you up to today?
What have you done today?
The participle here is ambiguous – like lots of other participles its ‘core’ meaning is resultative (‘have done’) but this expression in particular is often used to refer to future plans.
عمول الشاي
3mool @shshaay (L)
Make the tea!
بتقدر تعمل اللي بدك اياه
btigdar ti3mel illi biddak 2iyyaa (J)
You can do whatever you want
With b- it lines up with ‘do X to’:
شو عامل بحالك؟
shuu 3aamel b7aalak?
What have you done to yourself?
Note that in these senses 3imel has a very common synonym, ساوى saawa or سوى sawwa (mostly but not exclusively North Levantine versus South Levantine).
Make X into Y
Although most causal-ish senses of ‘make’ are actually covered by various causative contructions (for which see this post), عمل can express making X into Y:
عملناك مسخرة اليوم يا حمار
3milnaak maskharet ilyoom yaa 7maar (J)
We’ve made you the joke of the day, you idiot
نحن عملناك قوي لتستقوي ع القوات مش علينا
nə7na 3məlneek 2awi la-təsta2wi 3a l2uwweet məsh 3aleyna! (L)
We made you strong so you’d overpower the [Lebanese] Forces, not us!
With nouns
As with ‘do’ and ‘make’ عمل collocates with various different nouns either in set phrases or productively. In some cases English uses a different verb. It would be literally impossible to list all the possible collocations, but hopefully these will give you some idea:
عمل جهد (jəhd/juhd) ‘make an effort’
عمل عملة (3amle) ‘do something (bad), do a (bad) deed’
بتعمل عمايلها (3amaayil(h)a) ‘take its toll, work its magic’
عامل السبعة وذمتها (issab3a wzimmitha/zəmmətha) ‘done all the major sins’
عملها ‘go to the toilet’ [= do it]
عملها تحتو ‘soil/wet oneself’ [= do it under oneself]
عمل مشكلة, مشاكل ‘make/cause trouble, make problems’
عمل من الحبة قبة (mn il7abbe 2ibbe) ‘make a mountain out of a mole hill’
عمل معروف ‘do [someone] a favour’ (in NL, especially Lebanese, the imperative form of this is used as a way to say ‘please’)
عمل فتنة بين (fitne) ‘make trouble between, stir up trouble between’
عمل قصة كبيرة ‘kick up a fuss’
Note these cases where very different verbs are used in English but where عمل is entirely natural in Arabic:
عمل عملية ‘have an operation (as a patient)’ , ‘operate (on a patient)’
عمل فحص (fa7S) ‘have a (medical) test’
عمل حادث ‘have an accident’
عمللي جلطة ‘give me a stroke’ (mostly non-literal)
عمللي اكتئاب ‘give me depression’
عمللي لعية نفس (la3yet nafs) ‘makes me feel sick’ (metaphorically or literally)
عمل حساب جديد (7saab) ‘open a new account’
عمل عقد (3aq@d) ‘sign a contract, draw up a contract’
عمل جو (jaww) ‘create a [pleasant] atmosphere’
عمل نظام جديد ‘introduce a new system’
Note with certain loanwords, all with l-:
عمل ريسترت – restart (a computer)
عمل تشيك إين – check in (to a hotel)
عمل تشيك اب (tshek 2aab) – have a check up (at the doctor’s)
عمل فرمطة – format (a computer)
عمل تاغ – tag (someone on Facebook)
عمل بلوك – block (someone on the internet)
عمل مساج (masaaj) – give (someone) a massage
But also note that Arabic is much keener on repetition of words from the same root and may use a verb cognate to the object rather than default ‘do’: غلط غلطة ghəleT ghalTa ‘make a mistake’, etc.
Pretend
You’re probably familiar with عمل حالو ‘pretend to be’ [= make oneself out to be]. This is particularly common with the participle in a continuous sense:
عامل حالو شغلة كبيرة
3aamel 7aalo shaghle kbiire
He’s pretending to be a bigshot
عاملة حالها ما بتعرف
3aamle 7aalha maa bta3ref
She’s pretending not to know
Acting the
Plus indefinite noun عمل can mean ‘act the’ in a rude or dismissive way:
لا تعمللي معلم يا ولد
laa ta3məlli m3allem yaa walad
Don’t act the big man with me, boy
Often in this sense it appears with فيها ‘in it’ referring to the situation:
طول عمرك قمرجي نسونجي سكرجي وهلأ جاي تعمللي فيها شريف مكة
Tool 3umrak 2marji niswanji sikirji w halla2 jaay ti3milli fiiha shariif makke! (J)
A lifelong gambling, womanising drunk – and now you want to act like the Sharif of Mecca! [for this use of اجى see this post]
Go on about, talk about (inappropriately)
3imel can also be used dismissively in contexts like the following, where it means something like ‘go on about’ or ‘bring up’ in an inappropriate context:
هي بدها تزبيط! – لك لا تعمللي تزبيط مزبيط
hayy bədda taZbiiT – lak laa ta3məlli taZbiiT maZbiiT
This one needs fixing – Don’t give me all that about ‘fixing’!
What needs to be done now?
An expression:
والعمل هلق؟
w @l3amal halla2?
What do we need to do now?