Literal Translations and Phrase Explanations

In the Levant and probably most of the Arab World, when a man wants to get married to a woman, he goes to see her father and requests her hand in marriage. This interaction is quite awkward, and has spawned a whole genre of jokes. Here is one from the internet: شب رايح يخطب مرحبا عمي انا جاية اطلب ايد بنتك طيب عمي ازا قدرت تاخد الموبايل من ايدا خدا كلا وبلا مهر ازا بدك shabb raaye7 yikhTob mar7aba 3ammi ana jaayye eTlob iid bintak Tayyib 3ammi iza 2der@t taakhod ilmobayl min iida khida killa w bala mah@r iza biddak A guy goes to get engaged “Hello, sir, I’ve come to ask for your daughter’s hand.” “Look, son, if you can get the mobile out of her hand you can have all of her and without paying if you want.” ...

نمت زي الفسيخة ‘nemt zay el fasee5a’ MMMMM how delicious and appetizing!!!! Fasikh is a rotten, pungent fish pickled with salt that many Egyptians eat during the Sham El Nessim holiday to celebrate the beginning of spring. According to Wikipedia, the dish is comprised of “fermented, salted, and dried gray mullet” and the secrets of the fermentation process are often passed down from father to son. ...

يدغدغ “ydaghdagh“ As I was discussing Arabic grammar over some Stellas with friends the other day (before you think to yourself ‘wow this girl is a total nerd’: 99% of you have done this before. do not lie.), I said that during my year with CASA I discovered a love for words with 4 letter roots in Arabic, like يهمهم and يوشوش (both onomatopoeias for whispering) as well as يدغدغ (MSA for ‘to tickle.’ not entirely sure how this came up in a graduate level Arabic class, but. you know.). Then my friends informed me that in Egyptian, يدغدغ means ‘to smash’ as in ‘I’m going to smash your head in.’ Probably something you wouldn’t say in an actual fight, but definitely lies within the realm of siblings threatening to beat each other up. ...

Shami and Egyptian are not so far apart. In fact, thanks to Team Maha and my own adventures in Egypt, I’ve discovered to my disappointment that many of the expressions I thought were quintessential Syrianisms were in fact perfectly normal Egyptianisms as well. Since going back through all the posts ever and editing them to include a section about their Syrian relevance would be a lot of effort, this post is intended to be a super quick one-stop shop for all of the expressions that have turned up on here which have direct Shami equivalents. ...

A transcription of the short Egyptian film el Qonbela, with bombs, street theatre and pickles.

Guest Post by Christ Hitchcock for #TeamNisreen This expression – اسم على مُسَمّى – is apparently found everywhere in the Arabic-speaking world and is an excellent go-to compliment – as long as the person you are speaking to has a nice name. It basically means ‘your name describes you exactly’. If you meet someone called نادرة (rare), وسيم (handsome), باسم (smiler) or جميلة (beautiful), this will probably go down pretty well. I wouldn’t suggest citing it in response to a surname like عدوان (aggression), though, or to someone called غيث (light rain). I’m still working on finding out if this proverb was used in the days when people were called things like معاوية (bitch in heat). ...

كبر دماغك “kabbar dma3’ak” How about some guesses as to what this actually means for those unfamiliar with the phrase? Perhaps a concise statement about the value of education, maybe a colloquialism praising the benefits of expanding your mind…something logical like that, right? Nope, nerp, incorrect, not even a little bit close. It actually means, “take it easy.” Even Google Translate (!!!) was able to figure it out, and they’re usually pitiful with anything even remotely dialect related. ...

Today’s guest post includes a very exciting announcement made by our new friend Chris. Nisreen frustrated about the perennially high degree of humidity in her native New York This is Nisreen. Nisreen is a chronically lonely Syrian-American living in New York, with a Syrian father and a Palestinian mother. She is, in fact, Maha’s doppelganger – and Maha’s falling in love with her cousin out of sheer loneliness, and Nisreen’s parallel love story with her own paternal cousin, might well have been avoided if they’d only managed to meet one another instead of spending all their time looking woefully into a camera and monologuing about their respective misery. ...

ابو شنب “abu shanab“ This literally means ‘father of moustache’ but in reality is just a convenient way to point out an unknown man with enviable facial hair, aka ‘that guy with the moustache’ in English. If you’re referring to a guy walking down the street wearing a red shirt, for example, he may similarly become “abu a7mar,” and sometimes the phrase has a comical, “I’m kind of making fun of this person but not really,” type of feeling. ...

We took a bit of a break for travel and are back with arguably the most important post you have ever encountered & maybe WILL ever encounter on this blog: proper use of popular Egyptian swear فشخ (fashkh). I’ve heard rumors that the original meaning of this word refers to the exact moment where a woman opens her legs, which, honestly, sounds about right. There are a multiplicity of forms of and uses for this word, with the basics explained below. As always with curse words, use with caution. ...