I Don't Understand in Egyptian Arabic

Learn how to say, "I don't understand," a phrase that will certainly prove useful as you are exploring the Arabic-speaking world

Also Appears In: Survival Phrases Season 2 Throwback Thursday Level 1 Egyptian Arabic

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Dialogue

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Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION

In this lesson we’ll talk about a very useful phrase meaning “I don’t understand.” It is useful, of course, because many times you won’t immediately pick up on what people are saying.

GRAMMAR POINT

In Egyptian Arabic, “I don’t understand” is

mesh fahem.

Let’s listen to the phrase one more time:

(slow) mesh fahem.

mesh fahem.

If you are a female, you should say fahma instead of fahem.

فاهمة

So it would be:

mesh fahma

(slow) mesh fahma

mesh fahma

Limited knowledge of the Egyptian Arabic language may be one of the reasons for not understanding. In this case you can say..

ana mesh batkallem ʿarabi.

It means “I don’t speak Arabic”

Let’s listen to the phrase once again.

(slow) ana mesh batkallem ʿarabi.

ana mesh batkallem ʿarabi.

Let’s break it down. The first word ana means “I”

The second word mesh means “don’t” or “not”.

(slow) mesh.

mesh.

Next we have batkallem, a conjugated form of the verb translated as “to understand.”

(slow) batkallem.

batkallem.

And the last word ʿarabi means “ Arabic”

(slow) ʿarabi.

ʿarabi.

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