هلأ بدي اسألك سؤال. مين اكتر, نحنا ولا هنن؟ halla2 béddi és2alak su2aal. miin aktar, né7na wélla hénnen? I want to ask you a question. Are there more of us or more of them? miin aktar? – Unlike in (at least my) English, you say straightforwardly in Arabic ‘we are [X number]’, ‘we are many’, as opposed to ‘there are X of us, there are a lot of us. ...
7abiibi ana shaakke énnak 3am t7aaki banaat gheeri Babe I’m worried you’ve been talking to other girls… shaakke is the feminine active participle of shakk yshékk, which you probably originally learnt as ‘doubt’. It doesn’t quite line up with ‘doubt’, though, since you can say (as here) shaakek énnak 3am @tkhuunni (for example) – ‘I’m suspicious that you’re cheating on me’, which has the opposite meaning to ‘I doubt you’re cheating on me’. ...
Counting irregular verbs in any language is a kind of arbitrary process, since ‘irregular’ often means ‘not conjugating according to the most common patterns’ (even though a pattern may exist shared by large numbers of ‘irregular verbs’). In studies on Arabic the term very rarely appears because the tendency is to categorise all verbs which conjugate according to a pattern that appears with multiple verbs as regular. You can do this in colloquial, too, since the vast majority of verbs conjugate in a predictable way according to a pattern shared by all other verbs of a similar shape. ...
This ~bonus post~ is a list of the most commonly used conjunctions in Shami. Some of them are probably not by any technical definition conjunctions (and some of them have e.g. prepositional uses that I’ve included here for completeness’s sake), so if you prefer the term ‘linking words’ you can go with that too. احسن ما a7san ma Means ‘in case’ or more precisely ‘lest’ (but obviously English stylistic concerns prevent us from translating it that way): ...
Bonus post! This is a list of the most common ‘basic’ prepositions (i.e. not the ones that are combinations of a preposition and a noun or an obvious derivation from a noun). ب b- or bé- b- perhaps most commonly expresses static location and lines up with English ‘in’, ‘at’ or fuSHa في. بالبيت bi-lbeet – at home بالسيارة bi-ssiyyaara – in the car It is also used to express the instrument or means by which something is done: ...
You’ve probably already encountered the idea of the causative (make someone do something) in fuSHa with reference to forms II (fa33ala) and IV (2af3ala) of the verb. In many ways causatives work similarly in fuSHa and in colloquial, but the structures are a bit different and causatives are perhaps more common in dialect. Unlike English, which distinguishes compulsorily between ‘make’ and ‘let’ (both kinds of causative), Arabic combines the two under one basic causative. The causative can be formed with خلّى khalla plus a verb or with an independent verb form – both can mean either ‘let X do’ or ‘make X do’, or related meanings. ...
The fuSHa internal passive (e.g. دُرِسَ) is not productive in Shami, although it exists in a number of commonly used set expressions and classicisms and may be used when someone is speaking in elevated language, fuSHa-style. This may seem like good news, but in fact it is not; the passive in Shami is actually much less regular than fuSHa as a result and not all verbs have a passive form. ...
MaSdars (مصادر) or verbal nouns are very common in fuSHa. Cursory treatments of 3aamiyye (usually the same ones that claim that all 3aamiyye sentences are subject-verb-object or that the grammar is ‘very simplified fuSHa’) usually claim that the maSdar simply isn’t used in colloquial. There is an element of truth to this in that certain very common uses of the maSdar in fuSHa are usually or always replaced by structures with conjugated verbs: ...
Anybody who has studied fuSHa will probably have torn at least a little bit of hair out over the uses and abuses of أنّ إنّ and أنْ. You’ll be happy to know that in colloquial there is only one ‘that’, إنّو énno/inno, which is used in place of all of these. إنو can take other pronoun suffixes in place of the -o, like fuSHa anna, but the form with -o can stand in for other pronouns as well. ...
Definites As in fuSHa, relative clauses require a relativising particle when attached to a definite noun and no particle if attached to an indefinite noun. Unlike fuSHa – where this particle declines for case, gender, and number – in colloquial it is invariable, either élli/illi or yalli (depending on speaker and region): الرجال اللي بعرفو érréjjaal élli ba3rfo – the man I know البنت يلي شفتها فايت عالبناية élbén@t yalli shéfta faayte 3a-lbinaaye ‘the girl you saw going into the building’ ...