Levantine Arabic

This post is about a high-frequency structure that you’re unlikely to learn in your 3aammiyye classes but which is, conveniently, the title of an El Morabba3 song: ليكون laykuun. Dialects In all Levantine dialects ليكون can be used as an invariable expression. Historically, however, it is a contraction of لا يكون laa ykuun ‘let it not be‘ – that is, a negative subjunctive form of the verb كان. In North Levantine, conjugated forms sometimes appear in the same meaning: لا تكون راجع لهون laa tkuun raaje3 lahoon ‘I hope you’re not coming back here’. In the rest of this post for the purposes of simplicity I’ll only be using laykuun. ...

This is a post about a common, and commonly misused, word – تعبان ta3baan. First things first. Grammatically, تعبان is an -aan participle, which we’ve previously talked about here. Like many other participles, it refers to the state resulting from a verb – in this case تعب ti3eb/yit3ab. This verb has a causative with its own participle (تعّب ta33ab, متعب mta33eb). There’s also an adjective derived from the same root with a related meaning, متعب mit3eb/mut3eb. These forms do not differ significantly from dialect to dialect. ...

Today’s post is about two very useful words, لكان and ولا. Dialects The general rule is that لكان is used in North Levantine, while ولا is used in South Levantine (note that ولا in the sense of ‘or’, which we talked about a bit in this post, is used everywhere and isn’t the subject of this post). لكان is also used in northern Palestine. Note that lakaan and willa do not entirely overlap – some of the uses of lakaan do not have willa equivalents. ...

Apologies for the radio silence, guys – I was away for the summer and I’ve been working on various side-projects. But now we’re back. This post is another addition to our Verbs I Might Have Known series (for other episodes, see زبط , اجى, طلع, نزل, صار, نفسي and قعد), this time about possibly the most common and useful catch-all verb in spoken Arabic, عمل. ...

A slightly late post in our Verbs I Might Have Known series. This one is about اخد ‪2akhad, a verb we certainly all know. Compared to previous verbs in this series, 2akhad has less core or auxiliary meanings, but it does appear in a lot of common and useful combined phrases which we’ll cover here. Dialect forms اخد’s past form is the same everywhere, 2akhad. Its present forms, however, vary: in North Levantine they have a consistent long aa in the prefixes that absorbs the hamze (baakhod, btaakhod, byaakhod…) and in South Levantine they have a long oo except in the first person singular, where they have aa (baakhod, btookhod etc). The imperative forms in NL are khood, khədi, khədu, while SL has similar forms but (as expected) doesn’t have the shift of short u/i to ə, producing khood, khudi, khudu . Occasionally you might hear the shortened forms خو kho, خي khi and خو khu. The participle in NL is regular (2aakhed) but in SL is irregular, with m (ماخد maakhed). ...

Another post in our ‘verbs I might have known’ series (طلع/نزل, بدو, اجى, زبط) s about flexible, useful and common verbs that you probably know but might not realise the true power of. This week’s entry is on قعد ‪2a3ad, literally ‘sit’. Dialects As usual, let’s get the different dialect forms out of the way first. All dialects allow 2a3ad in the past tense, although some North Levantine speakers may have 2ə3ed instead. The present tense form for everyone has o. In North Levantine this means yə23od, and in South Levantine yu23od with the vowel harmony talked about here. ...

For the latest instalment in our ‘verbs I might have known’ series, we’ll be discussing another one of those words you almost certainly know in at least one or two meanings, but which you might not realise the real flexibility and utility of. This time, we’re talking about the humble Levantine word for ‘want’: بدـ. The word for ‘want’ is one of the first things you learn in any dialect, and one of the common words that is usually cited to demonstrate how diverse dialects can be (‘in Egypt they say عايز!’) We’ll cover that sense briefly in this post for comprehensiveness, but mostly this will be about other meanings you might not be familiar with. ...

This is a post about the verb اجى (from fuSHa جاء), which you almost certainly know in the literal sense since it’s such core vocabulary. You might not realise quite how useful this verb can be, though – and that’s why we’ve chosen it to be the next instalment of our verbs I might have known series (see also Təle3/nəzel, zabaT, and this post about useful -aan participles). Too many dialects Let’s get the dialect questions out of the way first. This is an irregular verb (more or less) in all Levantine dialects. To avoid repeating ourselves and to save space from being taken up by ugly tables, if you want to know the full conjugation the North Levantine forms can be found here. The South Levantine forms can be found in the PDF on South Levantine verbs. There are no major differences between the Lebanese and Syrian forms or between the Jordanian and Palestinian forms. The main differences between the North and South forms are: ...

A long, long time ago, we did a brief post about the use of ابو in Egyptian to express a certain kind of possession. This post is a specifically Levantine expansion on that one. ‘The one with’, ‘the one wearing’ Very much a شب ابو لحية Even if you’ve only taken your first few steps in learning Arabic, chances are you know the word ابو abu ‘father of’ – even if it’s only from people’s names. You will probably also have learnt the word أم ‘mother’, at least in fuSHa. (While 2abu is the same in all dialects in this context, its counterpart, ام ‘mother’, is either 2əmm (Sy/Leb), 2imm (Pal or Palestinian-Jordanian) or 2umm (Jor), depending on where you’re from. The first two alternatives are pronounced very similarly.) ...

This is another post about a common and versatile verb you probably won’t get taught in colloquial classes: زبط (sometimes spelt ظبط, though this does not reflect a different pronunciation) zabaT. Although its meanings and uses are more or less the same in all four dialects, its exact vowelling in the present tense is different: while Syr, Jor and Pal all have o (yəzboT, yuzboT and yuzboT respectively, with predictable differences you can read more about in the South Levantine verbs post) Leb has yəzbaT, with an a. ...