Levantine Arabic

Hi everyone! Today we’ll be talking about the word عم ‪3am, usually described as Arabic’s ‘continuous’. We’ve already had reason to discuss 3am briefly when talking about the continuous participle, which also sometimes translates English ‘-ing’. In this post we’ll look at its uses and meaning in more detail. What is 3am? 3am occupies a space somewhere between an independent word and a prefix. It’s usually combined with the bare present form (without b-) – although there is quite a lot of regional variation on this point – and is negated in Syrian with maa: ...

Hi everyone! In the last few posts we looked at the resultative and continuous meanings of the participle (as well as some continuous participles likely to be unintuitive for English speakers). In this post we’re going to look at one more possible meaning: the future. This use of the participle is deceptively simple for English speakers. Having learnt forms like جايه jaaye ‘coming’ and رايحين raay7iin ‘going’ as continuous forms, it feels natural to use them in contexts like the following: ...

In the last post we looked at the continuous use of the participle. In this post we’re going to look at the other main use, the so-called resultative. This is a very common construction: almost all verbs can form a resultative participle. But it often goes unnoticed by learners because it has no corresponding form in fuS7a. What does ‘resultative’ mean? Like a continuous participle, a resultative participle expresses a state. But in this case, the state in question is the state that results from a verb being completed. It’s probably easiest to get a sense of what this means in practice by provisionally translating the participle using the English present perfect form (‘have Xed’), with which it shares some similarities. Consider the examples on the left and right: ...

You probably already know that participles are used more commonly in Levantine than they are in fuS7a. But pinning down exactly what they are used for is a source of great frustration for many learners. In this post, we’re going to look at just one of the many uses of the participle. But it is a very common use, and the only one which you absolutely cannot do without: those participles that correspond to English forms with the continuous (‘-ing’). ...

This is a quick post about the Levantine passive. Passive verbs are often misidentified by English speakers (English teachers and editors are, if anything, unusually guilty of this). But although people are not always able to point them out, they’re very common in practice. Essentially, a passive construction takes a verb with an object and ‘promotes’ that object to subject, allowing us to delete the original subject and leave it unstated. English passives are formed with either ‘be’ or ‘get’ plus a past participle: ...

Hi, Today we’re going to briefly look at a phenomenon that often causes problems for learners: the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs. A transitive verb is one that takes a direct object, while an intransitive verb does not. In English, many verbs can have both transitive and intransitive meaning. These ‘ergative verbs‘ have an odd property. When they are used intransitively, the subject is the ‘experiencer’ of the action, but when they are used transitively, it is the object that expresses the ‘experiencer’ and the subject the ’causer’. This is most easily understood from some examples: ...

Hi everyone, This post is about a very common – and misleading – particle, the word قال ‪2aal. You will almost certainly have encountered this word already as the normal way of saying ‘say’ or ‘tell’: قللي ما في حدا بالبيت 2alli maa fii 7ada bilbeet he said there wasn’t anyone at home But what we’re talking about here is something different, something you might have encountered without even realising it. In this use, 2aal is an invariable particle. Although it looks like ‘he said’, it has no subject in the normal sense of the term. Instead, it marks second-hand information. If you ask me why Nour doesn’t want to go and see a film, I can say: ...

Hi everyone! I saw Faraj Suleiman in concert a week or so ago, and I thought it would be nice to transcribe something written within my lifetime for a change. Halfway through I realised that there’s a fairly gnarly swearword, which I normally try to avoid. So this post comes with a big old profanity warning and strong advice not to use this word until you’re sure you aren’t going to use it inappropriately (we’ve all been there). ...

Wow, it’s been a long time! For our first post in over a year, let’s look at a political song that feels particularly relevant now (or maybe is always relevant): رئيس الجمهورية (‘President’) by خالد الهبر Khalid Il Habre (that’s how he spells it in English, don’t look at me), a Lebanese protest singer. I hope his lyrics make up for the dryness of my content. The video is available here. If you prefer, you can watch a version performed live on a TV show with two extremely pained-looking hosts – one of whom, Adel Karam, you may remember as the star of one of my earliest posts (although he had a better hairline then). ...

Hello everyone. Apologies for yet another long absence – I’ve been working on something pretty big that I’ll be able to tell you more about soon. But to tide you over, here’s a post about a verb (or two verbs, in fact) that you probably know in one sense but don’t realise the full potential of. Dialects رجع is used universally. رد is used only in North Levantine in the senses described below (although it is a very common verb in other more literal senses such as ‘answer’). ...