Survival Arabic – Part 1

Here I’m starting a series of article on surviving with that much of Arabic speaking where it will get your necessary work done in your daily life activities. Of course this is collected from my daily learning process. I’m going to present this in a tabular form. The first column presents the English word or the sentence, second column the Arabic writing (which might not be up to the standard of well written Arabic but I’ll try my best) and the third column in the transliteration (Roman Language for Indians and Pakistanis) of the same Arabic word or sentence from the second column. I will also try to put in some proper pronunciation help.

Some words/sentences that can be used at a Grocery store (بقالة -> Baqala) or in any store:

This is not a challenge for South Asian people as 90% chances that you will be dealing with an Indian, Pakistani and/or a Bangladeshi person at the counter. This will help you in places like Makkah and Madinah and some bigger departmental stores (Like Panda, CenterPoint, etc) where a quite a number of Arabs work.

English Word or Sentence	Arabic Word or Sentence	Transliteration (Roman Language)
How much?	كم؟	Kam?
How much is this?	كم هو هذا؟	Kam haza?
How are you my friend?	كيف حالك يا صديقي؟	Kaifa Halak Ya Sadeeq?
How much is the book?	كم هو الكتاب؟	Kam Hua Al-Kitaab?*
How much is the milk?	كم هو الحليب؟	Kam Hua Al-Haleeb?
How much is the weight?	كم هو وزنك؟	Kam Waznak?
Is this new? Is this fresh?	هذا هو الجديد؟	Haza Jadeed?
This is so cheap!	هذا هو رخيص	Haza Raqeesa

*I mentioned ‘Hua’ in some sentences “Kam Hua Al-Kitaab?”, it is not all that necessary to say it when speaking.

I will keep adding some more conversational Arabic from time to time.

- Touseefuddin Syed