Today, we’re going to learn how to say ‘very much’ in Arabic, in seven different way. To do this, I’m using a song (check video below) by the Egyptian singer – Tamer Hosny – to be able to focus on each of these phraseس and learn how to pronounce them.

As you probably know, Arabic is a diglossic language, which means that it has a standard variety and several regional varieties or dialects.  This division resulted in a great linguistic diversity across the different Arab countries. This diversity is translated into linguistic differences on all levels, whether they were lexical (word choice), syntactic (sentence structure and word order), or phonetic (pronunciation). The thing is that these dialects are not mutually intelligible and some Arabic speakers from the Middle East (e.g. Iraq) can’t understand Arabic speakers from North Arica (e.g. Algeria, Morocco, etc). So, it’s a good idea to know how a very basic and everyday word such as the adverb: ‘very much’ is said in seven different countries/regions in the Arab world.

Before we start looking at these seven, let’s first make sure we know how to say ‘very much’ in Standard Arabic.

• Standard Arabic:

جـدّاً

Jiddan

(Very much)

 

Below, you’ll find a list of the seven different words, appearing in the order the singer is saying them. We’ll only focus on the first part of the song (starting at 1: 12 – 1:32) where the seven different words are actually mentioned.

• Libyan dialect:

          هـلـبا

             (Halba)

 

• Tunisian dialect:

          بـرشا

             (Barsha)

 

• Saudi dialect:

مـرّه

             (Marra)

 

• Levantine dialect:

كـتـيـر

             (Kteer)

 

• Moroccan dialect:

بـالـزّاف

              (Bizzaaf)

 

• Gulf Arabic dialects:

وايـد

              (Waayid)

 

• Egyptian dialect:

أوي

              (Awi)

 

At the end, I would like to add two other ways (below) of saying ‘very much’ that are used in Iraq and Sudan.

 

• Iraq:

كـلّـش

           (Killish)

 

• Sudan:

شـديـد

          (Shideed)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

*You can test yourself by trying to match the country where the word is usually used (to the left) with the actual words (to the right).

 

Morocco                            هلبا

Libya                                  مرة

Levant                                وايد

Egypt                                 بالزاف

Tunis                                  كلّش

Saudi                                  برشا

The Gulf countries            كتير

Iraq                                      أوي