Someone at a wedding in Ramallah points across the room and asks meen haada? Who's that? You could give a name. But the answer people actually want is the relationship: haada akhooy, that's my brother. Learn the handful of family words and you can place everyone in the room and say how you're tied to each one.
The core cast
Six words carry most of a family tree. Here they are bare, the way a list would give them.
| English | Palestinian |
|---|---|
| father | |
| mother | |
| brother | |
| sister | |
| son | |
| daughter |
bint does double duty: it's "daughter" and it's "girl." Same with walad, which is "son," "boy," or just "kid," and its plural awlaad covers the children of a house. The two sibling words, akh and ukht, both ride on that scratchy kh at the back of the throat, the one English doesn't have. Worth slowing down on.
Here's the catch, though. You'll almost never say these words naked.
Hanging "my, your, his" on the end
Palestinian has no separate word for "my." It glues a short ending straight onto the noun, the exact same set you hook onto bidd to say biddi, biddak, biddo. So a family word rarely travels alone. It shows up already owned.
Take imm:
- immi — my mother
- immak — your mother (to a man; swap the
-akfor-iktalking to a woman) - immo — his mother
The -ha ending gives "her," -na gives "our," on down the line. The same hook works on the rest: ukhti (my sister), ibni (my son), and binti for "my daughter." Solid, regular, no surprises.
And then there are two words that refuse to play along.
The odd pair: abooy and akhooy
You'd expect "my father" to be abi and "my brother" akhi, just ab and akh with the -i ending stuck on. That's exactly what Modern Standard Arabic does, and it's the textbook form you might already know. Palestinian doesn't. It stretches a long oo into the middle instead.
- — my father
- abook — your father
- abooh — his father
Brother does the identical thing. is "my brother," akhook is "your brother," akhooh is "his." Two of the most common people you'll ever mention, and they're the two irregular ones. Annoying, but you'll say them so often they stick fast.
This is an old quirk, a tiny club of nouns that grow a long vowel before the ending. You don't need the grammar name for it. Just bank abooy and akhooy as whole words and move on.
abu and akhu: "father of" before a name
There's a second shape these two take, and it turns up everywhere once you catch it. Put in front of a name and it means "father of": abu khaled is Khaled's father, abu 3ali is Ali's father.
But it goes well past the literal. It's how grown men get addressed and talked about all the time, usually by their eldest son's name. A man named Mahmoud whose oldest boy is Khaled becomes abu khaled to half the people who know him, and calling him that lands warmer and more respectful than using his own name. Women get the matching umm: umm khaled is "Khaled's mother." You'll meet plenty of people you only ever know by their abu or umm name.
is the same shape for "brother of," as in akhu salwa, Salwa's brother. That one's less an address and more a way to pin down who someone is in a crowd.
Keep the two shapes apart in your head: abooy is "my father" (before an ending), abu is "father of" (before a name).
Two words for uncle
Arabic splits something English lumps together. Your father's brother and your mother's brother are not the same word.
- — uncle on your father's side
- khaal — uncle on your mother's side
So "my uncle" is either 3ammi or khaali, and which one you reach for tells the listener which side of the family you mean before you've said anything else. The split runs through aunts and cousins too. The family tree keeps its two branches labeled the whole way down.
One bonus use: 3amm is also a friendly way to address an older man you don't know, the way English might reach for "uncle." ya 3ammi to the older guy at the vegetable stand is polite and a little affectionate.
Grandparents, relatives, the whole 3eele
Widen the circle and a few more words show up:
- jidd — grandfather (jiddi, my grandfather)
- — family
- qaraayeb — relatives
The plural of jidd is jduud, which stretches to mean grandparents and, further back, ancestors. 3eele is the household sense of family, the people you live with and answer to. qaraayeb is the wider net: the relatives you see at weddings and funerals and not much in between. (One of them on their own is a qareeb.)
Married in
The people who join by marriage get their own words.
- — husband
- zowje — wife
- — married
A man says ana mitjawwez; a woman swaps in the feminine -e and says mitjawze. Point at a couple and the same endings keep working: jowzha (her husband), zowjeto (his wife). So when someone at the wedding points past your sister and asks meen haada, you've got it ready: haada jowz ukhti, my sister's husband.
