Literal Translation

Watching TV in Arabic is a fantastic way to get more listening practice and generally improve your vocabulary and comprehension, and I highly suggest all Arabic learners do this during their down time whenever possible. But when you get sick of that, or when there’s nothing to watch except Saudi men practicing falconry and Amr Adeeb flailing his arms about / having his weekly heart attack on air, you’ll inevitably find yourself flipping over to an English language movie. And I’m here to tell you how to make this experience quadruple the fun: pay attention to the subtitles. ...

هات بق “hat bo2” (as said to a man. To a woman: haty) This post does not, as you might have expected, belong under the inappropriate tag. The phrase actually means a very innocent, “I want a bite.” [For all my MSA-amiya transitioners out there, remember that ق often changes to hamza in amiya, hence no qaf sound in the transliteration.)

ايه وراك بكرة؟ “eh warak bokra?“ Like the infamous “You drink a cigarette?” this is one of those phrases that is so strange and confusing when you first hear it, you are struck with a blinding rage that makes you want to destroy the first copy of Hans Wehr you can get your hands on, because that shit is now dead to you. Confession: A language partner first asked me this almost a year and a half ago and I literally looked behind myself for a sec because I had no clue what he was saying. All it means is, “What do you have to do tomorrow / What are you doing tomorrow?” ...

العملية ناشفة “el 3ameleya nashfa“ File under: Shabab Speak, an enigmatic subset of Cairene dialect.

جالي برد “galy bard“ Actually means ‘I got a cold,’ but a super poetic way of expressing the thought to English-speaking ears. This structure works for all sorts of diseases that can ‘come’ to you, as well as various states of being, like: جاتلي حالة اكتئاب (something like, ‘a wave of depression washed over me,’). Interestingly, you can also take a cold: انت لابس خفيف قوى, هتاخد برد كدا = You’re not dressed warm (lit. ‘you are a very light dresser’–remember our friend ism fa3l), you’re going to get (take) a cold that way! ...

ايه كل الصواريخ دي؟ “eh kol el swaree5 de?“ For some reason I have not yet been able to pin down, in Egyptian Arabic, both inanimate objects and various types of waterfowl have strong associations to sexuality in the world of street harassment. صاروخ literally means missile or rocket, and since the phrase above uses the plural صواريخ, it would be used in reference to multiple babes (baes?).

ضحك علي “da7ak alaya” This phrase literally means “he laughed at me” but in practice translates roughly to “he screwed me over,” as in I was charged too much money for something. One of the most apt phrases I have personally encountered on my Arabic journey–you KNOW that guy let out an extended cackle of sweet satisfaction as your sorry khawaga ass trudged away out of sight.

Seven Bizarre Phrases Used to Harass Women in Egypt Highlights include random men comparing women to waterfowl and a plethora of food references!

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. ...

مش هاعرفك تاني “mesh ha3refak/ek tany“ Sticking to our current theme of insulting other people: when another person makes your blood boil so much that you don’t want anything to do with them ever again and have no qualms about burning a bridge, you can whip out this phrase which basically means, “I will never speak to you again.” The word ‘know’ in Arabic is used in ways that sound curious to English speakers; more on that here. ...