Friday 2 November 2012

Lebanese Sayings

Whomever you meet in Lebanon will at some point have the perfect saying for the perfect situation. When this blog was first started, we wanted to add something funny in the content and what better than Lebanese sayings. Why funny? Because the literal meaning behind these sayings are bizarre, however when dissected and studied deeply, end up meaning something completely different. So, in order to gather a good amount of Lebanese sayings, I had to go around and ask my parents, my friends and their parents for some really nice ones. And boy did I manage to accumulate a lot! I will introduce one every once in a while, and through that saying, I can teach you some vocab and some grammar.

First, I will introduce the saying in the way it is said in Lebanese Arabic, then  translate it literally, and of course lastly, give you the 'hidden' meaning behind it. If you want to impress someone, or just throw out spontaneous sayings that reflect perfectly the situation, go ahead and try this one out !

Underlined in green and respectively numbered words are explained in the below image.



Please note that the -ing in eating, drinking, and dancing for example, is the '3amb' and most of the times the b is silent, except for in this case - 3am bitkhallef. 3amb is always followed by the verb. So for eating, drinking, and dancing, it would be 3am tekol, 3am teshrab, 3am tor2os, respectively. These verbs describe an action being done by a feminine thing or person or animal because of the 't' right at the start of each verb. Alternatively, for a masculine subject, eating, drinking, and dancing would be 3am yekol, 3am yeshrab, 3am yor2os. As you can see, you replace the 't' with 'y' to switch from a feminine subject to a masculine subject.

That's it for today, feel free to leave us comments if you would like to ask questions or inform us if this is understandable or not. Did you like the saying? Does your culture have a similar saying? Do share!


2 comments:

  1. "did I manage to accumulate a lot"

    I want more :)

    ReplyDelete