Study Lebanese

I have been asked many times what are the differences between the Lebanese language and the Arabic language, and since I have been answering this question so many times, I decided to write this small article to highlight some of the major differences and ask people to read it if they want to know what these differences are. Please note that I am not making any claim that one language is better than the other, or that I prefer one to the other. I am simply pointing out these differences for the students of any of these languages to be aware of.

“Al cabaabiiko jamiila” (The windows are beautiful)

In Lebanese this also does not exist, you simply say “Li cbabiik ḣilwiin”.

Arabic: Akala al walado al tuffaḣato (The boy ate the apple)

Lebanese: Akal l walad ttiffeḣa

Lebanese: Hadek nnhaar riḣna ana wi yyek xal baḣr

(The other day you and I went to the beach)

Arabic: zaaka nnahaaro zahabna ana wa anta ila al baḣr

If you have any questions let me know.

A recent eHow article gives a good insight on “How to Train to Be a Foreign Language Interpreter”, and uses Lebanese as an example:

For example, if you have a degree in Arabic and want to work with a local Lebanese population, your university degree may not be sufficient. You will need to know Lebanese Arabic in order to be an effective interpreter, as Lebanese Arabic differs enough from standard Arabic to hinder communication.

Other than the fact that the article refers to the Lebanese language as “Arabic Lebanese”, instead of “spoken Lebanese” or “Lebanese dialect” or of course “Lebanese language”, it is still a good example.

You can read the rest of the article here.

I have been asked various times about the best songs to listen to help someone learn the Lebanese language. I am going to make some remarks about this subject, because a person who wants to use songs as an additional mean to study Lebanese, should be aware of a couple of things so that they do not pick up the wrong accents:

Even though the songs of Fairuz are very popular, as well as Majida Rrumi, and others, and they are a good way to help people learn the Lebanese language, Many of these songs are written in what we usually refer to as “Shakespearean Lebanese”, which has two distinctive characteristics. Let’s take an example of a song such as “Ṫiiri ya ṫiyyara ṫiiri” by Fairuz:

Lyrics:

Ṫiiri ya ṫiyyara ṫiiri ya wara` w ḱiiṫaan

Baddi irjax bint żġiiri xala ṡaṫḣ l jiiraan

W yinsaani zzamaan xala ṡaṫḣ l jiiraan

Xalli faw` ṡṫuḣ bxaad xa nnasmi l ḱajuli

Aḱaduni maxhun li wlaad w radduli ṫṫofuli

Ḋiḣkaat ṡṡibyaan, wi ġnaani zamaan

Radditli kitbi w madristi wil xomr lli kaan

W yinsaani zzamaan xala ṡaṫḣ l jiiran

Law fiina nihrob wi nṫiir max hal wara` ṫṫaayir

Ta nikbar baxid bakkiir, cu ṡaayir cu ṡaayir

W ya zahr rrimmaan, miil b hal bistaan

Ta yitsallo zġaar l arḋ w yiḣlaww zzamaan

W yinsaani zzamaan xala ṡaṫḣ l jiiraan

a- There is a stress on the “i” in the end of the words, ending with the “i” sound”. The Lebanese language has a variety of sounds for this ending ranging from a strong “ii” in the Bekaa and the South, to a softer “i” reaching almost to an “e” sound in the North. So “Ṫiiri” is almost pronounced in the song as “Ṫiirii”. So, you have a variety of choices to spell these words, and all of them are correct.

b- All the words marked in red have a very specific character: they all have a “aa” in them. In the Lebanese language most of the “aa” are actually “e” sound such as “ġneni zamen”, or “bxed” or “wled”.

The great Lebanese poet and thinker Saxiid Xa`l approached this phenomena from a different angle, and instead of treating these as different sounds, he created a letter, which looked like an “a” with a dash that crosses it sideways. The long “a” or “aa” as we write it, is an “a” with a small tick on the side” in his script. I personally prefer the LLL instead of course.

I recommend Fairuz (Fairouz) songs if you know how to make this distinction. Most of them are slow paced and easy to follow. Majida Rrumi’s (Majida Al Rumi) older songs are good as well. New ones such as Feris Karam (Fares Karam), Ziaad Rriḣbeni (Ziad Al Rahbani), as long as you pay attention to these two elements mentioned above.

I came across this blog post the other day, and thought to share it with you. It’s about a Londoner who knows the “MSA” Arabic, and tried to use it with a Lebanese person at a Lebanese restaurant in London:

He also said something that made me realize the limitations of Modern Standard Arabic: “I want to talk to you in Arabic, but you sound like a book.” Hahaha. He went on to say that the way they speak in Lebanon is different and while he understood me perfectly well, his responses would be in a Lebanese dialect which I probably wouldn’t understand. Duly noted.

This goes to show the vast limitation of trying to learn Arabic, only to find out that you needed to learn Lebanese instead. Make sure you know exactly what language you actually are interested in before making a rash decision.

In Lebanon, there are several dialects. If you want to categorize them, they split into 6, and possibly seven dialects:

1- The Bayruti dialect
2- The Northen dialect
3- The Southern dialect
4- The Biqaaxi dialect
5- The Central Mount Lebanon dialect
6- The Durzi Lebanese dialect

Also, there is what is called the “modern dialect”, and that is what is taking over little by little.

Yet, the dialects of Lebanon are very important, especially on a linguistic level, because the phonological attenuations that are at the basis of these dialects point out to a very specific structured grammatical foundation of the Lebanese language itself.

For example, let’s take an adjective such as “crooked” in a sentence, using the modern Lebanese dialect.
So, you say for example:

“This wire is crooked: Hayda ccriiṫ alwa`”

The plural form of this statement is:

“These wires are crooked: Hawdi ccraayiṫ lu`”

In the south of Lebanon, where I come from, the older generation attenuates the plural form “lu`” to something like “liw`”

But if you consider the structural transformation of the group of adjectives that fall under the same category, this attenuation does not sound very strange of a sudden, but rather, it makes much more sense. Let us expand our search for a second to include a wider range of structurally similar adjectives:

azra`: Blue
aḱras: Mute
aṫrac: Deaf
ahbal: Dumb
aḱḋar: Green
alwa`: Crooked

If you notice the rhythm of these words, you will see that there is a common pattern here. These adjectives are comprised of 5 letters, the first letter is an “a” and the letter before the last is also an “a”. The transformation from singular masculine to plural happens like this:

second letter + “i” + third letter + last letter

so:

azra`: zir`
aḱras: ḱirs
aṫrac: ṫirc
ahbal: hibl
aḱḋar: ḱiḋr

and finally,

alwa`: liw`

Therefore, the various Lebanese dialects are very important to preserve, and document, because they are part of the underlying grammatical structure that governs our language, and they sometimes could be more correct on a structural and grammatical level than that of the modified version.

A blog post of a Brit living in Lebanon, mentioned  recently that you only need 5 word to survive in Lebanon:

And a commentator added one more:  ”Yalla”.

I  will try to explain what these words mean in the Lebanese language:

“Xan jadd” means “really”.

“Yixni” means “It means”, or “almost” or “approximately”.

“Bukra” means “tomorrow”. It also could be used to brush somebody off, by saying you will do this tomorrow, knowing that you will never do anything as such.

“Ncalla” means “God willing” or “hopefully”, sometimes with a hidden meaning such as “This will never happen unless God wills it”

“Ma baxrif” means “I don’t know”.

Below is a small video I made of a program for conjugating Lebanese verbs. The program is designed in a way that you only have to enter the verb in English in the simple present tense, and the software will give you the meaning of this verb in Lebanese, in the simple past and simple present tenses, and it will also conjugate the verbs with the personal pronouns.

This software is not designed in such a way that all these verbs are entered into the program. Only the meaning of the verb is entered in a database, and an algorithm conjugates these forms. This means that it is a simple translation of word to word, English to Lebanese, to populate the software.

The Lebanese verbs are so uniform, that not even one irregular verb escapes the conjugation logic that it follows. Isn’t that amazing? You have irregular verbs in any language, but in Lebanese, everything seems to be extremely systematic.

P.S. The video is best seen full screen HD 720.