Levantine Arabic

Apart from the iDaafe the main way of expressing possession is the particle تبع taba3 (or تع ta3), the equivalent of Egyptian bita3. This appears between the noun and its possessor. As with the iDaafe it can express various different types of relationship. حط الستاتوس تبع الواتس بكومنت 7étt lé-status taba3 élwat@s bkooment Put [your] Whatsapp status in a comment اللون تبع جراباتك اللي انت لابسو حاليا هو لون قلبك élloon taba3 jraabaatak élli inte laabso 7aaliyyan huwwe loon 2albak The colour of the socks you’re wearing now is the colour of your heart ...

You are probably familiar with the fun (or not-so-fun) phenomenon of so-called tamyiiz (تمييز, sometimes translated into English as ‘specification’). In fuSHa, tamyiiz is one of the many uses of the accusative – you take a noun, stick it in the accusative, and it turns into something that can be (often clunkily) translated as ‘in terms of’ or ‘by way of’. This handy PDF gives some nice examples: يزداد ايمانًا ‘increase in belief’, يختلف علوًا ‘differ in height’, اجمل اسلوبًا ‘more pleasant with regard to style’. You’re probably most familiar with it from the last usage, with superlatives and comparatives. ...

Saar-ySiir is another one of those very, very common verbs that appear all the time but that are rarely treated in detail. I said ages ago I was going to write a post about صار, and now seems like a good time to put it out. So here goes! Happen One of the core meanings of صار is ‘to happen’. Although حصل and the fuSHa حدث (pronounced 7adas) are also occasionally used, صار is by far the most common verb to appear with this meaning: ...

One point we didn’t cover in any of the previous posts is the very basic issue of how to express doing something to yourself (reflexives) and doing something to one another (reciprocals). Both of these are quite important and differ (to some extent) from fuSHa, so let’s cover them here! Reflexives The reflexive pronoun In English we have the reflexive pronouns formed with possessives and ‘self’, and in fuSHa we have basically the same system with نفس ‘spirit’. Whilst there are contexts in which you might hear نفس with reflexive meaning in colloquial, far and away the most common reflexive pronoun in Shami is not formed with نفس but with حالـ plus possessive pronouns: ...

This transcription is of a scene from حلاوة الروح (‘sweetness/beauty of the soul’, though a literal translation doesn’t quite cover the meaning), which if I remember correctly came out a couple of years ago during peak musalsal season. In it our two heroes, Sara and Isma’il, meet in a Beirut bar by chance. Isma’il is the brother of a childhood friend of Sara’s, Nisreen. Sara, an aspiring filmmaker, has just got back to Beirut after months staying at her father’s house in Dubai. She has left without telling her father, who runs a TV station there and had promised her a job, after months of disappointment in which she has not even seen him once. She tells her Lebanese friend (whose name I have forgotten) about her plans, and halfway through the conversation Isma’il comes over to introduce himself. ...

This should probably have come much earlier, but better late than never! Possibility ممكن mumken/mémken This one literally means ‘is possible’ and is usually best translated as ‘can’, ‘could’ or ‘might’ depending on context. As an auxiliary, it is followed by a subjunctive verb: ممكن تروح معنا اذا بدك mémken @truu7 ma3na iza béddak – you can go with us if you want بتعرف انه الواحد احيانا ممكن يطلع خلقه bta3ref énno ilwaa7ed a7yaanan mumken yéTla3 khél2o – you know that sometimes, a person can lose their temper… [= that one sometimes their temper can rise] ...

Quadriliteral verbs are those verbs with roots consisting of four consonants. Although these verbs are less common than their triliteral equivalents, there are a lot of them in both fuSHa and colloquial. ‘Quadriliteral’ is not a pattern per se like form V or form VI. Some quadriliteral verbs are derived from nouns or adjectives with four consonants, typically although not exclusively loanwords (تلفن talfan ‘telephone’ < telefoon). Some are derived from native words with triliteral roots but incorporate part of the original pattern of that word (تمركز tmarkaz ‘centre on’ < markaz ‘centre’). Some of them are onomatopoeia (زقزق za2za2 ‘squeak’, فرفر farfar ‘flutter’). Some of them are modified forms of triliteral verbs with an additional sound added, adding an additional nuance to the verb (ترقوص tra2waS ‘dance about, dance around’ < ra2aS ‘dance’). Finally, some of them belong to less common derivational patterns like tfa3lan ‘act like’ (تحيون t7eewan ‘act like a moron’ < 7eewaan, تزلمن tzalman ‘act like a man’ < zalame) or fa3la (طعمى Ta3ma ‘feed’ < Ta3m, فرجى farja ‘show’ < tfarraj 3ala). ...

Rounding out the triliteral verbs, this post is dedicated to verb tables for forms IX and X. Form Xes (sta- verbs) are very common in colloquial as in fuSHa, and have a range of different meanings (I have problems with the old ‘seek X’ trick that people use to work out their meaning but it gets the job done a lot of the time). Form IXes (colour verbs) on the other hand are pretty rare and often have non-form IX equivalents, but I’ve included them here for the sake of completeness. Note that their shape, stress, and suffixes are identical to form VIII doubled verbs although the pattern is different. ...

The non-simple (i.e. form II+) verbs have far less variation in their possible vowels. This post presents form II, III, V and VI (fa33al, faa3al, tfa33al, tfaa3al). Many form IIs are causative, whilst forms V and VII are often passives of form II and form III respectively. The only variations on these four patterns are for defective verbs (i.e. verbs whose final root letter is a semivowel). Although hollow roots, assimilating roots etc can form verbs on these patterns, they appear with semivowels patterning as normal consonants: walla3, twalla3, shaawar, tshaawar etc. ...

This ~bonus bonus bonus~ post is pretty self-explanatory, I think. All forms given here are Syrian – minor variations occur in other dialects. This is not a comprehensive list of all of the possible conjugation patterns of Syrian. Every Arabic verb has a present vowelling (e.g. yéf3al) and a past vowelling (e.g. fé3el). Most verbs pair a present vowelling with a past vowelling according to predictable patterns – most fé3el verbs are yéf3al verbs in the present, for example, and most fa3al verbs are either yéf3el or yéf3ol verbs in the present. There are a not-insignificant number of verbs, however, which have unpredictable or unusual pairings of a present and a past vowelling. Only a dictionary or native speakers can provide this information. Nonetheless, any verb which has fa3al vowelling in the past will conjugate in the past like katab here. Likewise, any verb which has yéf3al vowelling in the present will conjugate like yét3ab here. ...