Forgetting Al-Kitaab and Learning Palestinian Arabic: If you study Arabic in the United States, you are using the textbook Al-Kitaab from Georgetown University Press. You’ve gotten to know Maha pretty well. You wish she’d find some friends so she could quit being so wi7da. After all, New York is a big city!

You also know her cousin / husband Khalid, who stayed in Al-Qahira for gaami3a. And you know her wise father, who was a doctor if memory serves. You also think all Arabs speak al-fus7a, and that the main difference between the ways Lebanese and Egyptians speak is that the former likes to party on al-jumi3a and the latter likes to pray on al-gumi3a.

When visiting Palestine, feel free to set the Maha-Khalid saga aside until next semester, and be open to breaking many the many rules you were taught in Al-Kitaab. 

Don’t get me wrong – if you absorbed every single vocabulary word and grammatical construct through Al-Kitaab 2, you will be able to express yourself in a reasonably sophisticated way. However if Khalid and Maha are the only Arabic speakers you’ve ever known, you will think Palestinians are speaking a different language altogether.

Here are a few tips for my fellow Al-Kitaabers to ease your transition into the Palestinian dialect.

ة Ah

The ‘taa marbuta’ is said more like “eh” rather than “ah”.

ق K

The ‘qaaf’ is said like the ء ‘hamza’, e.g.

Verb Conjugations

In the first person, “bi” is almost always added. Also, instead of using the word فٓعٓلٓ to mean “to do”, must people use عٓمٓلٓ which literally means “to work”. 

Also, in the past tense, the pronoun is usually required, since the final short vowel is often skipped and so ambiguities can occur without the pronoun.

Some snazzy verb conjugation tables:

Phonetic Palestinian Arabic

ء Hamza

The ‘hamza’ is usually ignored, substituting instead the whole vowel, e.g.:

Some Useful Words

Some words are just different from what you learned in Al-Kitaab. A great many words. Here are a few I didn’t get at first.

Talk To People!

You must talk to people in Arabic. Start with your bad Arabic, and it will become good Arabic. Palestinians are thrilled that you want to learn their language and will be patient as you stumble toward the word you want to say. Just speak Arabic!

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Tags: Basic Palestinian Arabic, Study Palestinian Arabic, transition into the Palestinian dialect