You're at a sweets counter in Nablus and the case has twenty trays. You know the name of exactly one of them. The man behind the counter is waiting, tongs ready. The good news: you don't need the other nineteen names. You need one move. Point, and say .
That's "I want this one." It works at any counter, market stall, or bakery case in the country, and you can use it the same afternoon you read this.
The bare request: biddi haada
is "I want," the all-purpose word for asking for anything in Palestinian. (There's no actual verb "to want" here; the biddi guide walks through how it bends for he, she, and you.) For pointing, you only ever need the "I" form.
is "this one." Glue them together and you've got a finished request:
- — I want this one
No other Arabic required. You could have a totally blank vocabulary and still walk out with what you came for, as long as you can point at it.
haada or haay?
There's a small fork. haada is the masculine "this," and is the feminine one. Palestinian objects all carry a gender, so the thing you're aiming your finger at is either a haada thing or a haay thing.
- — I want this (masculine item)
- — I want this (feminine item)
Now the honest part. You're pointing precisely because you don't know the word, which means you don't know its gender either. So which do you grab? Default to haada. Nobody is going to correct a visitor over it, and you'll be understood every time.
But a lot of single, countable market items turn out to be feminine, because the "one of them" form so often ends in -a or -e: one apple is , one slice is , one pill is . (That -a unit ending is the whole story behind the market collective nouns.) Point at a single small thing and haay is often the right call.
| You're pointing at | It's | You say |
|---|---|---|
| a bag of something () | masc. | |
| a slice () | fem. | |
| a tin () | fem. | |
| a glass () | fem. | |
| an apple () | fem. |
The full set of pointing words, including for a whole group, lives in the this, that, these guide.
law-sama7t makes it polite
biddi haada on its own is clear, but it lands a little bare, like jabbing a finger and grunting "this." So soften it. Tack on and the request turns courteous:
- , — I'd like this one, please
law-sama7t is literally "if you'd allow," and it pulls double duty as the "excuse me" you use to get a busy vendor's attention in the first place. To a woman it's law-sama7ti.
does the same job, closer to a plain "please." To a woman, min faDlik. Either one is fine. Pick whichever one sticks in your head and run with it.
The back-and-forth at the counter
A good vendor checks before he scoops. He'll point at the tray himself and ask haada? ("this one?"). Now you just confirm or steer:
- , — yes, this one
- , — no, that one (the feminine thing next to it)
- , — no, this one (and you point again)
aa is the relaxed everyday "yes." la' is "no." That's the entire loop: he points, you answer aa or la' and re-point, and you run it until he's holding the right thing. You never once needed its name.
When he hands it over he'll probably say (here you go), the word covered in the tfaDDal guide. Your line back is .
Two at once: haada w-haay
Want more than one thing? Chain them with w- ("and"):
- — this one and that one
Put biddi in front and it's a full order: biddi haada w-haay. Keep pointing and keep adding w-, and you build the whole thing one jab at a time: haada, w-haay, w-haada kamaan. For a single sweep at a tray of identical things, hadowl ("these") also works, but the point-and-add method is clearer when the vendor needs to know exactly which trays you mean.
Put it together
The whole exchange at a knafeh counter, start to finish:
- You: , . (point)
- Vendor: ? (points back)
- You: , . (point at the next tray)
- Vendor: . ? (a whole kilo?)
- You: , law-sama7t. (half a kilo)
- Vendor: .
- You: . ? (how much?)
That last word, qaddeesh, is where the price conversation starts, and the asking prices guide picks it up from there. Everything before it you can do with two pointing words and a finger.
