Tag: colloquial

How to be an Inquisitive Arab #2 -“When are you getting married?”

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On February 9, 2018

In Levantine Arabic, Musings

Ahla w Sahla to the second post on how to be an Inquisitive Arab. In this post, you’ll learn how to ask the million dollars question : “When are you getting married?”

The idea of marriage has always been an important part of Arab culture and the young adults above the age of 20 are constantly under pressure to get married.

So how do Arabs ask the question in Arabic? The answer is not a straight word for word translation of the English counterpart.

Below are 2 variations of the million dollars question:

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How to be an Inquisitive Arab #1 -“Who do you take after?” + idioms!

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On February 7, 2018

In Levantine Arabic, Musings

Ahla w Sahla to the first post on How To Be An Inquisitive Arab – because we all know that most Arabs are curious people who like to ask tons and tons of questions.

Have you ever gotten in a taxi in an Arab country and sat through the journey without being interrogated by the driver? Sometimes you wonder if they even know where to draw the line…

So anyway, one of the most popular questions that Arabs love to ask is “Who do you take after? Your mom or your dad?”

However, is it even a genuine question? Most of the time, the question is asked in an attempt to judge you for your behavior/personality and attribute it to someone (i.e your parents.) Mothers say it to attribute their children’s negative behavioral traits to the fathers and vice versa.

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How do Arabs end an argument (or turn a deaf ear to replies)

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On January 29, 2018

In Levantine Arabic, Musings

Ahla w Sahla fiikum to another post of #How do Arabs 😉

In this post, I’m going to list out a few phrases that are useful for ending arguments.

In general, they are to mean “My words are final” and thus any replies would not be tolerated. It is also important to note that most often it is a person of a higher authority than the other who would be saying these phrases (Eg: a mother to her children)

The first phrase is…

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How do Arabs express their doubts?!

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On January 24, 2018

In Levantine Arabic, Musings

MarHaba guys!

Recently I’ve learned a few Syrian expressions with regards to expressing doubts which are pretty funny so I figured I might as well write a post on them.

But before I do that, let me throw out some simple phrases that I’ve known previously.

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