Inappropriate

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. ...

Continuing in the spirit of Chris’ last post, here is another joke — which is in pretty bad taste, I might add — about engagement/marriage from the Internet. It’s not as full of useful vocabulary as the last one, but it is certainly amusing: انا جاي اطلب ايد بنتك يا حج بس يابنى دى لسا بالمدرسة خلاص اجى بالليل تكون جت I’ve come to ask for your daughter’s hand, Hagg. Son, she’s still in school! Alright, I’ll come back at night when she’s here. ...

The other day I stumbled upon a commercial so masterfully stuffed with euphemisms that I had to write about it on the internet. It’s about a guy named بدري (“Early”) who has an issue that affects both him and his ladyfriend. I’ve written out a transcription & translation of the commercial and discussed a few useful words in Egyptian Arabic at the end of the post so you all can have a productive laugh. Also, anyone with insight as to why a man appears on the back of the motorcycle in a fuzzy animal costume around 0:15 gets five gold stars. ...

A few more dubious subtitling choices that were recently brought to my attention: Alternative translation for “girlfriend” = صديقة حميمة (‘Intimate friend’) “Stripper” = راقصة (‘dancer’ with no further elaboration) “Hey, motherfucker” = يا سافل (‘Varmint’ or ‘ratfish’ according to the omnipotent Google) “Fuck no!” = كلا يا سيدي (No, sir!) All this aside, I will say that I once heard the English word (just the word!) ‘kiss’ censored out of some Bruno Mars song playing at City Mall in Jordan, so it could be much worse. Five gold stars for effort, subtitlers, wherever you may be. ...

Watching TV in Arabic is a fantastic way to get more listening practice and generally improve your vocabulary and comprehension, and I highly suggest all Arabic learners do this during their down time whenever possible. But when you get sick of that, or when there’s nothing to watch except Saudi men practicing falconry and Amr Adeeb flailing his arms about / having his weekly heart attack on air, you’ll inevitably find yourself flipping over to an English language movie. And I’m here to tell you how to make this experience quadruple the fun: pay attention to the subtitles. ...

العملية ناشفة “el 3ameleya nashfa“ File under: Shabab Speak, an enigmatic subset of Cairene dialect.

ايه كل الصواريخ دي؟ “eh kol el swaree5 de?“ For some reason I have not yet been able to pin down, in Egyptian Arabic, both inanimate objects and various types of waterfowl have strong associations to sexuality in the world of street harassment. صاروخ literally means missile or rocket, and since the phrase above uses the plural صواريخ, it would be used in reference to multiple babes (baes?).

Seven Bizarre Phrases Used to Harass Women in Egypt Highlights include random men comparing women to waterfowl and a plethora of food references!

يضرب حشيش “yadrab hashish“ aka, “He smokes hash.” This applies to all illicit drugs: You don’t smoke, take, or inject them, you just…hit them. Although I guess you can drink hash too. #TheMoreYouKnow

هو عاوز الضرب بستين جزمة “hwa 3awz ed-darab b-sitteen gazma“ Equivalent to “That guy really sucks,” but with a far better mental image.