Levantine Arabic Corner

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Irrisim
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Postby Irrisim » 2006-10-31, 17:52

Levantine Arabic
Levantine Arabic (العربية شامي) is spoken in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Western Jordan and Egypt.
It contains about 70% Arabic vocabulary, the majority of vocabulary after Arabic comes from Aramaic.
There's also been influence from the Ottoman period by Turkish, and recently French and English.
The Levantine dialects are classified like this:

    Northern Levantine
    There are two main dialects, classified into subdialects.
    Syrian is the largest spoken of the two dialects, but Lebanese, however is the most famous.
    - Syrian (Damascene, Alawite & Aleppan)
    - Lebanese (Northern, Mountainous & Southern)
    Southern Levantine
    Spoken in Palestine, Egypt and West Jordan.
    Egyptian is the biggest and most famous. Jordanian shares a lot of features with Palestinian, and they're almost identical (more than Syrian and Lebanese)
    - Palestinian (Gazan, Hebronian (El Khalieli) & Southern)
    - Egyptian (Cairene, Upper & Lower)
    - Jordanian (Western (including Amman) )


There are 3 additional letters, which are used to write foreign loanwords with:
چ (g)
پ (p)
ڤ (v)
Egyptian Arabic however, uses ج when writing a foreign word that contains G because their jiem is pronounced as a G.

OK enjoy. I'll work out a lesson soon.

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Jonne
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Postby Jonne » 2006-11-01, 14:48

M@! wrote:
Irrisim wrote:Shokran M@!!
I will write an introduction to Levantine Arabic tonight.
Inshallah now that this is also expanded to more dialects, it'll also attract more learners :)

Take your time Sami. Hayda lthread amaaneh f ra2abtak. :lol:

Irrisim wrote:La Jonne: 3afwan, maa 3areft inta rajel :oops:

Mesh momkin! :shock:
:mrgreen:


yea, who knows about finnish names :roll:

i think i might try translating the song :?

a9lan i'm just listening to it :P

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Postby zhiguli » 2006-11-01, 18:08

Irrisim wrote:Well, I do suggest a change of the title to "Levantine Arabic"


:y: :y: :y:

about time..i wanted to start threads about syrian and palestinian but realized i could do neither, because my "dialect" is not pure anything, just levantine :wink:

Irrisim
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Postby Irrisim » 2006-11-01, 18:56

Well, here you go :lol:
Now we can discuss any Levantine dialect and subdialect 8)
Are you currently studying any form of Levantine, and if so, what materials do you use?

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Postby zhiguli » 2006-11-01, 23:35

Irrisim wrote:Well, here you go :lol:
Now we can discuss any Levantine dialect and subdialect 8)
Are you currently studying any form of Levantine, and if so, what materials do you use?


nearly all of them, but i'm trying to stick to syrian, which seems to be the best-documented of dialects, and israeli/palestinian arabic, which my first (and best) "teacher" speaks as her native language. my arabic being far from decent, i regularly add in french/english/hebrew/msa words, mixing things up even more. (and yes, i know it's bad but even natives do it, after all...)

for syrian, i use:
http://www.syrianarabic.com/
A Dictionary of Syrian Arabic: English-Arabic by Karl Stowasser and Moukhtar Ani
A Reference Grammar Of Syrian Arabic by Mark W. Cowell (with audio CD)

lebanese:
Spoken Lebanese by Maksoud N. Feghali
An Introduction to Lebanese http://www.cedarseed.com/water/lebanese.html
Petite introduction au parler libanais by Andre d'Alverny

palestinian:
Cours d’arabe parlé palestinien par Moïn Halloun
Prolog's ערבית מדוברת (spoken arabic) audio course (prolog has some other excellent material for those of you who know Hebrew)
and a couple of israeli books, not sure what the first one is called but the second one is הבה נדבר ערבית (let's speak arabic) teaching spoken arabic in hebrew letters.

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Postby Irrisim » 2006-11-02, 13:26

Aww yes, you wouldn't wanna incorporate Hebrew words when you're in Syria :lol:
Syrian Arabic is a very beautiful dialect, I can definetely say - this is the dialect where no one is trying to incorporate more foreign words. I feel honored to speak this dialect, it has a certain tune to it.
Palestinian contains more Hebrew words than other Arabic varieties, but you might want to be careful not to make it completely like an Israeli speaking Palestinian.

http://semitistik.uni-hd.de/seeger/il-xalil.pdf
^It's a great course for El Khalieli (Hebronian), but it's in German only. This site contains audio recordings to the pdf book.
And please, post any of your questions here :D

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ego
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Postby ego » 2007-09-02, 20:28

ahlen!

Count me as a new student of Syrian-Lebanese Arabic. I can already speak some.. I am using "Colloquial Levantine Arabic" and www.syrianarabic.com
Also I have some native friends' assistance :wink:

See you around I hope..

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Jonne
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Postby Jonne » 2007-09-05, 16:26

I thought we could all translate the refrain of sho 3abali by Bassima (since b7ebbak wala3 is forgotten.. or so it seems :P)

kil ma kbar 7obbak yekbar
w n3aish el 3omro b2orbak
kil d2ee2a 7ebbak aktar
niyal el metlak 7abbo
7obbak 9ar nesmet 7ayati
leili nhar 7obbi o ahati
9ert el rou7, wein matrou7
teb2a bi albi o baly


here's a video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jSGlZrCMX-g


.. and 9 = ص

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Postby Basher » 2007-09-29, 23:03

I like the syrianarabic.com course, I've been through that briefly in my former class. I probably won't study it much more, though, since I don't think I'll be in Syria anytime soon.
Native: English
Really good at right now: Arabic (MSA) & Hungarian
Very interested in learning before I turn 30: Japanese
Can't forget despite years of non-use: Spanish
Never could quite get the hang of: German
Learned mostly through pirated computer game translations and might still be able to write messages in it: French

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Postby zhiguli » 2007-11-28, 6:33

I don't see a lot of interest here but as I was doing this for someone else anyway I will post it here for anyone who may care for it

A few words about negation.

To say "no" is simple:

لا laa (لأ la2 in palestinian and jordanian)

But to negate verbs or في fii ("there is") there are a number of words/particles:

ما maa which is used in Syrian/Jordanian (and in MSA)
مو muu - Lebanese
مش mesh - Palestinian (also in Egyptian AFAIK)
-ش -(e)sh Palestinian - this one goes at the end of the verb - بحبش b7ebb(e)sh "i don't like (it)", this can also be combined with ما - ما بحبش ma b7ebbsh

While the different particles are more typical of the aforementioned dialects, they are not necessarily restricted to them; Palestinian, for example, uses all of them, and so can you.

For negative imperative لا laa is used:

لا تنسى laa tensa "don't forget"

ش can also be used:

تخافش tkhaafsh "don't be afraid"

There's also اوعى ew3a and حاجة o 7aaje which are somewhat stronger and used for warnings:

اوعى تنسى ew3a tensa don't you forget
حاجة تضحك o 7aaje teD7ak stop laughing!

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-10-20, 23:18

I am soo glad I found this topic! I love Levantine Arabic :D And I want to learn it but I'm very bad in it :oops:

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-10-23, 18:22

I think this site is really good, it is all about lebanese culture and it has music, videos and articles, also has phareses in Lebanesse Arabic:

http://shoofimafi.com/

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-11-04, 0:10

A site with basic phareses in syrian arabic:
http://www.cafe-syria.com/Useful_Arabic.htm

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Jonne
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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Jonne » 2008-11-23, 17:40

شو يعني "صيبة عين"؟؟ سمعت الكلمة بالغنية الجديدة لـدارين حدشيتي

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-11-24, 22:44

Darine is awsome :P

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Jonne » 2008-11-25, 19:27

I have always been disappointed by her albums.. everytime they contain a couple of good songs but the rest is 3adi :P her newest album has some cool songs like kil el essa, meshta2a and dinyi b3eedi..

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-11-26, 0:24

Yeah meshta2a is my favourite! Did you hear Nancy's new album? I didn't really like any of the songs except "min ghriry ana" and "Mashi 7addy" Lol :P

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Meera
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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-11-26, 1:11


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Jonne
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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Jonne » 2008-11-26, 17:15

Meera wrote:Yeah meshta2a is my favourite! Did you hear Nancy's new album? I didn't really like any of the songs except "min ghriry ana" and "Mashi 7addy" Lol :P


I think i listened through it once, but didn't find it very good :P her previous albums are better.. betfakkar fi eih, baladiyat and min gheiri ana are ok. i'm not a huge nancy fan anyway (but i used to listen to akhasmak ah and inta eeh)

i just downloaded nawal's (el kwaitiyye) new album and it's quite good (mou liya is great), although i don't usually listen to khalijy music :)

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Re: Levantine Arabic Corner

Postby Meera » 2008-11-28, 23:23

Jonne wrote:
Meera wrote:Yeah meshta2a is my favourite! Did you hear Nancy's new album? I didn't really like any of the songs except "min ghriry ana" and "Mashi 7addy" Lol :P


I think i listened through it once, but didn't find it very good :P her previous albums are better.. betfakkar fi eih, baladiyat and min gheiri ana are ok. i'm not a huge nancy fan anyway (but i used to listen to akhasmak ah and inta eeh)

i just downloaded nawal's (el kwaitiyye) new album and it's quite good (mou liya is great), although i don't usually listen to khalijy music :)



yeah I dont like Nancy but i like most of her music abut i compleatly hated her new album Lol

Lol i love Khalijy music :D


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