Levantine Arabic

Hi everyone! In the last few posts I’ve been working my way back through our fuS7a to shaami series and trying to update it. Today, though, I’ll be taking a break from that in order to do something a bit more advanced: a video transcription. Specifically, we’ll be looking at a clip from the Syrian TV series بقعة ضوء (Spotlight). I’ve uploaded the scene, complete with Arabic subtitles, below. This way, you can follow exactly what they’re saying in Arabic – hopefully allowing you to develop your listening skills. You can then work your way through the transcription and translation below. You can find the rest of the episode here if you feel like seeing how it plays out. ...

Hi everyone! In this post we’re going to talk briefly about adjectives. If you know your basic fuS7a and have read the last two posts on nouns and number, how adjectives work should come fairly naturally to you. The main difference is that they make far fewer distinctions than in fuS7a. As we will see, not only do they have no case marking, but they also have a far simpler number system than either their fuS7a counterparts or, in fact, than Syrian nouns. ...

Hi everyone! In this post we’ll be looking at how Syrian handles ‘number‘: singulars, plurals, duals etc. Plural The plural of a noun is used to refer to two or more of that noun – unlike fuS7a, which uses plurals for three or more and uses its dual form for two. Syrian plurals are formed in a dizzying range of ways. Although there are patterns, the only reliable solution is to learn them as you encounter their singulars. Still, it’s worth briefly looking over the options, if only so you can recognise them when they pop up. ...

Hi everyone! In the last few posts we looked at the ‘phonology’ of Syrian Arabic (its inventory of sounds, its stress system, correspondences with fuS7a and sound changes caused by adding suffixes). It’s now time to consider some different types of words and how they interact with one another. In this post, I will be talking about the most basic building block of any sentence: the noun. Specifically, I’ll be talking about three fundamental properties of the noun and how they work in Syrian: case (or more accurately word endings), gender, and definiteness. I’m going to leave number (singular, plural etc) for a later post in order to save space. ...

Hi everyone! In the last few posts we have looked at various aspects of Syrian phonology (its sound system, its stress system) and how these aspects correspond to fuS7a. Before moving on to various other bits of grammar, we need to briefly consider how sounds interact with grammar more broadly (morphophonology). Specifically, I’m going to talk about two very commonly applied rules that you will encounter all the time when dealing with suffixes: lengthening of final vowels and deletion of almost-final vowels. ...

Hi everyone! In the last two posts we have been looking at the ‘phonology’ of Syrian Arabic (its inventory of sounds and its stress system). Before going on to look at other bits of the grammar, I wanted to write something about correspondences with fuS7a. Beginners’ dialect classes often teach spoken Arabic as a sound-substitution game: apply a few sound changes to the fuS7a words you know and hey presto! – you’re speaking 3aammiyye. This is a terrible idea. For one thing, constantly translating in your head is no path to fluency. But more importantly, the vocabulary used in speech is not simply a modified version of fuS7a vocabulary. You can’t predict whether a fuS7a word will have a direct Syrian counterpart. Nor can you predict exactly how a counterpart that is used will be pronounced. You have to learn Syrian vocabulary as a system in its own right. ...

Hi everyone! In my last post we looked at the sounds of Syrian Arabic broadly defined. In this post we will look at two other important phonological features: the stress system and the helping vowel. Stress Stress is the emphasis placed on a particular syllable above others. The Syrian stress system (and the system of Eastern dialects more broadly) is more or less identical to the one you were probably taught for fuS7a. I won’t spend too much time on it because it should be fairly familiar. The rules should be applied in order: ...

Hi everyone! I’ve been slowly working through my original fuS7a to Shami series over the last few weeks to try and update it and make it a bit more readable. I’ll be posting the results as a new series of posts over the next couple of months. As the title suggests, I’ll generally be assuming a reasonable basic knowledge of fuS7a, since more or less everyone who learns a dialect will have that knowledge. But as before, I’ll be starting from the absolute basics and working up to more complicated concepts. ...

In this post we’re going to look at two very useful and versatile prepositions: قد ‪2add and على قد ‪3ala 2add. قد ‪2add 2add generally means ‘as much as’. For an English speaker its most useful function is probably to provide an easy way of translating ‘as X as’: ما حدا شاطر قدو maa 7ada shaaTer 2addo nobody’s as clever as him ما بكره شي قد هدول الناس maa bikrah shii 2add hadool innaas I don’t hate anything as much as I hate these people ...

Hi everyone! In this post we’ll be looking briefly at a feature of the Arabic lexicon. Specifically, we’ll be thinking about verbs like the following, which typically correspond to two different verbs in English: Meaning 1 Meaning 2 لبس libes ‘wear’ ‘put on’ عرف 3iref ‘know’ ‘find out’ ‘realise’ نام naam ‘sleep’ ‘fall asleep’ The two different meanings are obviously closely related. The verbs in the first column (meaning 1) all express a state, while the verbs in the second column (meaning 2) express the action that brings that state into being. Now, not all pairs of this kind are clearly distinguished in English. Consider: ...