How do you say this in Arabic?

How do you say this in Arabic? Type the phrase in the box below and get it in Egyptian Arabic, the preset dialect, with full harakat, the Standard Arabic version and a Latin line to read aloud. Change the dialect menu to Standard, Levantine, Gulf, Saudi, Iraqi or Moroccan if the listener is from there. Free, no account, nothing stored.

How do you say this in Arabic? Pick the dialect first

There is no single answer to how do you say this in Arabic, because the Arabic people speak depends on where they are from. Egyptian is preset on this page: Egypt has the largest number of speakers (approx. 100 million) and its films and songs have made the dialect familiar across the region. An Egyptian phrase is therefore the safest bet for a listener whose country you do not know. If you do know it, change the menu: Levantine for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, Gulf for the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, Saudi, Iraqi or Moroccan. Standard Arabic is for writing, school and speeches; said out loud at a dinner table it sounds like a news bulletin.

Whatever you pick, the Standard Arabic line appears under the dialect version, so you always have the written form as well as the spoken one. Dialect hubs such as Egyptian Arabic and Levantine Arabic explain how each differs from Standard.

36 everyday phrases: English, Standard Arabic, Egyptian

Greetings, thanks, yes and no, please and sorry, the questions a traveler asks, the numbers one to five and the line everyone looks up first. Arabic changes the ending depending on who is speaking and who is addressed, so the rows that differ are given twice. The Latin column is the Egyptian pronunciation.

Any phrase not in the table goes in the box at the top. The Standard Arabic column uses full case endings, the way the tool prints it. In speech the final short vowel is usually dropped, so شُكْرًا جَزِيلًا is said shukran jazeelan and مَعَ السَّلَامَةِ simply ma3a s-salaama.

How to say that in Arabic: this, that and what is this

Pointing words are where Standard Arabic and the dialects part ways most clearly. Standard has هَذَا (haadhaa, this, masculine), هَذِهِ (haadhihi, this, feminine), ذَلِكَ (dhaalika, that, masculine) and تِلْكَ (tilka, that, feminine). Egyptian uses one pair for both this and that: دَه (da) for a masculine noun and دِي (di) for a feminine one. It goes after the noun: الْكِتَاب دَه (el-kitaab da, this book).

• What is this? Standard مَا هَذَا؟ (maa haadhaa); Egyptian إِيه دَه؟ (eeh da).
• How do you say this in Arabic? Standard كَيْفَ تَقُولُ هَذَا بِالْعَرَبِيَّةِ؟ (kayfa taqoolu haadhaa bil-3arabiyya); Egyptian إِزَّاي تِقُول دَه بِالْعَرَبِي؟ (izzaay ti'ool da bil-3arabi).
• I want that one (a man speaking). Standard أُرِيدُ ذَلِكَ (ureedu dhaalika); Egyptian عَايِز دَه (3aayiz da).

Masculine and feminine: why one phrase has two forms

Arabic verbs and the word for you carry the gender of the person you talk to, and adjectives carry the gender of the speaker. That is why I love you is بَحِبَّك (ba7ebbak) to a man and بَحِبِّك (ba7ebbik) to a woman. It is also why a woman says I'm fine as كُوَيِّسَة (kuwayyisa) while a man says كُوَيِّس (kuwayyis). When the tool has to guess, it assumes a man and says so in a short note under the result. Write to my wife or I am a woman in the box and it adjusts.

Reading the Latin line

The pronunciation column follows the spelling Arabs use in chat. Doubled vowels are long (saba7 has a short a, salaam a long one). 3 is the letter ayn, a sound made by tightening the throat on an a, and 7 is a breathy h. An apostrophe is a catch in the throat; in Egyptian it also replaces the letter qaaf, so قَلْب (heart) is 'alb. Egyptians say the letter jeem as a hard g, so jameel becomes gameel. The complete scheme is on the transliteration Arabic to English page, and a single name can be spelled on the name in Arabic page.

Frequently asked questions