Hi all.
In my 2nd last blog post, I said I was learning Lebanese Arabic. It's basically the dialect of Arabic spoken in the Levantine Region for example in countries like Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. May Allah save our people  from the wars and takfiri militants and Israeli settlers. Aameen.

So yeah, one of the first verbs that I learned in Lebanese is the verb to want. It's the best verb to learn because, literally guys, you can go on practising: I want this, I want water, etc etc. You can even mix it up with English words. I'm still sorting out how to write Lebanese, is it written in Arabic letters, or should I just use English letters, you know? But in this post I'll go ahead and write it out in English.

For "I want", you say, "Baddi".
"I want water" - "Baddi moy"
"I want to go" - "Baddi rouh"
"I want to sleep"- "Baddi nemi"

Just a quick Arabic Grammar tip; in Arabic, you usually don't need to use a pronoun in front of a verb conjugation, except in a case where you want to emphasize the meaning. For example, you could say, "Ana baddi rouh" where "ana" means I, and at the same time, "baddi" means "I want" so it's kind of a repetition.

Moving on. "You want" is actually gonna be split up based on whether the "you" in question is a female or male person. I'll add a (m) to indicate male and (f) for female. You (m) is "enta" and you (f) is "enti"
"You (m) want" is "baddak"
"You (f) want" is "baddik"

"You (m) want water" - "Baddak moy"
"You (f) want to eat?" - "Baddik tekoli?"
"You (f) want coffee?" - "Baddik ahwe?"

In Modern Standard Arabic, which the official form of Arabic used in government documents, schools, sign posts (you get the picture-everything serious) is constant throughout all Arabic speaking countries. Why I'm mentioning this is because of one of the slight deviations in pronunciation in the Lebanese dialect. You see, in MSA, coffee is "qahwa", but in Lebanese, as you saw above, it's "ahwe". This is because the dialect substitutes "qaf" for "hamza" which is basically a glottal stop.

Next up, we're gonna learn "he wants" and "she wants". He is "huwe" and she is "hiyye".

"He wants" - "Beddu"
"She wants" - "Bedda"

"He wants to go" - "Beddu yrouh"
"She wants a car" - "Bedda seyara"
"She wants to eat" - "Bedda tekol"

Huzza! That's it for today's Learn Lebanese lesson! I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to use "Baddi" aka "I want" sometime today. It's great to know how to speak a dialect, really. You get to sound more friendly, plus you can understand Lebanese TV! Speaking of which, yesterday I got to watch my new fave "Ward w chouk" Turkish drama. It was kind of a happy episode and that basically means everything spoken is going to be basic conversations that are easy to understand. On the other hand, if it's a dramatic epsiode, it would be filled with complex words like-I don't know, "You killed my sympathy when you destroyed my peonies"
By the way,I'm still trying to fin out what Ward w Chouk means. I mean I know that "ward" means "rose" but "chouk" can't possibly mean fork, can it? That really doesn't sound like a fantastical name for an emotional series. "The Rose and the Fork"? It doesn't sound right, haha.