Beginner - Levantine Dialect: Lucky You

Thanks for another great lesson in Levantine Arabic!

Is "lucky us" "نيالنا"? And "lucky them" نيالهم? What about "lucky you" (when addressing 3 people or more)? نيالكم? Or are these the classical forms? It seems to me that in Levantine the suffix for addressing 3 or more sounds like:
"كن-", hence نيالكن.

One other thing: According to the vocab list, الرَقُص (dance), is pronounced "ar-raq9". Is that the classical and Levantine pronunciation? Or would you tend to say "ar-ra29"? (as mentioned in lesson "What's wrong?").

Sorry for peppering you with all these questions.

Please don't apologize, Karen! The comments section is the right place to ask questions and yours are good ones. You're absolutely right about lucky us and lucky them.

Lucky you (for TWO or more people in Levantine) IS نيالكن - you're correct. In Levantine, the -كم ending becomes -كن.

It's somewhat tricky deciding how to write Levantine, because there's no standardized way of doing it and many Levantine speakers actually write out words in Roman letters with numbers when writing notes in dialect. However, in general the "ق" is written even though it's pronounced as a LIGHT hamza. In terms of pronunciation alone, you might write it like this: "al-ra2ْ9."

Just let me know if that's not clear.

hello everyone
my native language is Arabic.
so I can help you in learning arabic
feel free to add me
my skype is khaled.mohammad60
my hotmail is kh_mo34@hotmail.com

Thanks so much for your prompt reply, Sierra!

Does this mean there is no dual form in Levantine? Now that would be a relief ... ;-)

Hello there in Beirut,

This is a great lesson again, thank you.

To follow up with Karen's question first:
Even after your explanation, Sierra, I still do not understand, why الرَقُص (dance) is spelled with a damma in the vocab list.

A remark: the one occurrence of أكثر شي in the vocab lists should probably corrected to أكتر شي if still possible.

Then, what would be asking after the worst thing, similar to the construction in the phrase شو بتحبّ أكتر شي ?

And what is the stand alone meaning of أكتر ? I do not find it in the dictionary.

Thank you again,
Tau

Hi again everyone,
I was wondering whether you might be able to do a podcast in Levantine sometime about someone asking for directions (like the lower intermediate "Directions to the zoo" in classical Arabic). It would be interesting to see whether you actually use the same words for "left", "right", "straight ahead", etc.
Thanks in advance!

great lesson - one caveat however : do strike the right balance between the classical(should remain the reference) and local dialects please.
thanks for understanding my concern - cheers

Yes, Karen, there is no dual in Levantine - niyalna!

Welcome, Khaled!

Tau, you deserve a big thanks for rooting out typos. You're absolutely right. There shouldn't be a damma in raq9 and there isn't one in the transliteration. Also the spelling of 'aktar' should be consistent. 'Aktar' is not a word in standard Arabic. It is the Levantine equivalent of the word "akthar" which is the superlative form of "kitheer" or "a lot." So "akthar/aktar" means "more or most."

To say the worst thing or the thing you dislike the most, you'd say "aswa2 shi."

Thank you for the comment, plop, but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can you please clarify?

And that's a good suggestion, Karen. We'll whip up a Levantine podcast on directions soon ;-)

sorry for being a bit cryptic - don't want to heart people - the idea I try to convey is : if you are getting into dialects(can get confusing as there are many different) please do make the comparison with the classical language like e.g." this is the way this phrase is in classical" -hope this clarifies a bit more - cheers

wooww i see that sierra is so helpful .thank you sierra and thank you guys .karenn
i heard that your coming to lebanon from previous comment.so we will work on more levantine podcasts and sure the DIRECTION'S coming soon .right sierra !!!

Looking forward to the next lessons, Sierra and Elias. And thanks to everybody else for their support and valid comments.

Thank you, sierra, for your reply.

To come back to my original question above, how to ask for the worst thing:
'What do you like most?' شو بتحبّ أكتر شي ؟
' What do you like least?' شو بتحبّ أسوأ شي ؟
Is that correct? Quite similar to English with the verb 'like' حبّ in both senteces?
What then would be the verb(form) to be used in the question: 'What do you hate most?',
بتكره from كره like بتحبَّ from حبّ or another verb?
Sheers, tau

Hi! Thanks for these podcasts, they've been really helpful. My only problem is that I have trouble with the spelling of some of the words, and therefore with exact pronunciation. One question I have is how do you spell 'of course' or 'certainly'? is it اقيض? Thank you!

@ksw913, the word for (certainly or for sure) is (akeed أكيد).
@tau, your first sentence is right, but the sentence (What do you like least?) should be (شو بتحب أقل شي). And for (تكره) just replace the verbs. So you say (شو بتكره أكثر شي؟) and (شو بتكره أقل شي؟). Hope that is clear.

So if you want to replace THING with, let's say, MOVIE, that works fine?
And what if you want to talk about your favorite THINGS, or MOVIES, what does that change?


Thanks

Relating to the last question, is it that simple to replace thing, with movie? Since it's much more likely that you'll be talking about something like your favorite book than your favorite 'thing'.

& how would you say my favorite books are ____.