Levantine Arabic

Shami and Egyptian are not so far apart. In fact, thanks to Team Maha and my own adventures in Egypt, I’ve discovered to my disappointment that many of the expressions I thought were quintessential Syrianisms were in fact perfectly normal Egyptianisms as well. Since going back through all the posts ever and editing them to include a section about their Syrian relevance would be a lot of effort, this post is intended to be a super quick one-stop shop for all of the expressions that have turned up on here which have direct Shami equivalents. ...

Guest Post by Christ Hitchcock for #TeamNisreen This expression – اسم على مُسَمّى – is apparently found everywhere in the Arabic-speaking world and is an excellent go-to compliment – as long as the person you are speaking to has a nice name. It basically means ‘your name describes you exactly’. If you meet someone called نادرة (rare), وسيم (handsome), باسم (smiler) or جميلة (beautiful), this will probably go down pretty well. I wouldn’t suggest citing it in response to a surname like عدوان (aggression), though, or to someone called غيث (light rain). I’m still working on finding out if this proverb was used in the days when people were called things like معاوية (bitch in heat). ...

Today’s guest post includes a very exciting announcement made by our new friend Chris. Nisreen frustrated about the perennially high degree of humidity in her native New York This is Nisreen. Nisreen is a chronically lonely Syrian-American living in New York, with a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. She is, in fact, Maha’s doppelganger – and Maha’s falling in love with her cousin out of sheer loneliness, and Nisreen’s parallel love story with her own paternal cousin, might well have been avoided if they’d only managed to meet one another instead of spending all their time looking woefully into a camera and monologuing about their respective misery. ...

I’m absolutely certain that you, dear non-native Arabic speaker currently located in Cairo, want no part in anything that could jeopardize the delicate, spotless reputation that foreigners living in Egypt have worked so hard to maintain over the years. In the spirit of this sentiment, TeamMaha has compiled the following brief guide to commonly used titles in Egypt to help smooth out your day-to-day interactions with the population of om al-dunya. ...

Let’s see if you can make any sense of these questions and statements that are the most confusing and also just sound really oddly specific the first time you hear them: Discussing an upcoming trip: هتقعدي فين في الغردقة؟ – Where will you sit in Hurghada? In a heated discussion with my landlord about an electrical problem that causes lightbulbs to burn out twice a week: المفروض يعقدوا اكتر من تلات ايام! – They should sit more than three days! ...

When I first moved to Egypt I used to be able to tell whether I was having a good Arabic day or not judging by the nationality people guessed I was: Syrian/Lebanese meant I had thrown a Shami word or two into the conversation, but was generally doing okay; Moroccan meant that my speech was mostly unintelligible but still coding as Arabic; and American meant that I should probably take a nap before trying to use real words again. The spectrum of compliments I’ve received on my Arabic ability over the years has also been quite broad, ranging from delight to suspicion to spontaneous marriage proposals. ...

Following up on our earlier explanation of a bunch of MSA words that sound ridiculous when used in real life, here are a few more: 1. بدون Albeit a nice sounding word, no one says this in real life. In some dialects of Shami you might order your coffee من دون سكر (without sugar) but in Egypt من غير is most common. ...

I was the only foreigner sitting in a classroom of Egyptian twenty-somethings, trying my best to sound just smart enough to let my classmates go on believing I was half Arab of some variety during a remedial Arabic grammar class. Suddenly, a distraction grabbed by attention: فين المبتدا يا ماما؟ يا ماما!!؟ “Where’s the subject, mom? Mom!!?” I looked around for some sort of reaction, like the giggles and pointing that always broke out in elementary school when one unfortunate student accidentally called the teacher ‘mom.’ No no, this situation was the reverse: it was our professor that had called the student ‘mom,’ and it was absolutely, 100% fine. ...

أنت بيئة قوي “Enta bee2a awi” (to a guy) This actually means something like, “you are so trashy right now.” Can also be used to describe geographic locations, restaurants, bars, and anything that has fallen prey to disrepair or sketchiness. I’m personally not sure how the word ‘environment’ came to mean ‘trash’–I think I’d be making quite a leap by suggesting it has to do with how the environment in Cairo is actually consistently quite full of trash, so I won’t do that. ...

بلا قافية “bila gafiya“ This is an extremely useful and wonderful little phrase brought to my attention by a friend in Jordan. The way he explained it, you use it when someone says something that could be misinterpreted, much like how English speakers use ‘That’s what she said.’ The example he gave was someone saying لانه صغير (‘li’anoo sa3’eer’ – because he/it is small) with the appropriate douchey response being بلا قافية. ...