You're standing over a tray of olives in the sooq in Nablus. The vendor catches your eye and waits. Your head empties out. Good news: you don't need a sentence here. You need one word.
That word is qaddeesh. How much. Point at the pile, say it, and the whole transaction opens up. Everything else in this guide hangs off that one question.
qaddeesh, and the 'addeesh you'll actually hear
qaddeesh is two pieces glued together: qadd (amount of) and eesh (what). So it's literally "what amount." Tidy.
But listen at a stall in Ramallah and that q at the front rarely lands as a hard q. In the city it softens into a glottal stop, the little catch we write ', so what comes out of most mouths is 'addeesh. Same word, lighter front end. Say whichever sits easier on your tongue. Both get understood from Jenin to Hebron.
It works on its own, just pointing, or aimed at a specific thing. There's no verb in any of these, because the present tense skips "is":
- qaddeesh? — how much? (pointing)
- qaddeesh haada? — how much is this?
- 'addeesh il-keelo? — how much for a kilo?
How many vs how much: qaddeesh and kam
Both words get the lazy gloss "how much / how many," but at the till they do different jobs. qaddeesh is about money: the price, the total you'll hand over. kam is about quantity, how many units you're getting.
kam comes with one rule that snags nearly everyone. The noun right after it stays singular. So you ask kam keelo? for "how many kilos," never kam keelowaat, even though you plainly mean more than one. Same when you're counting out the numbers themselves: kam sheekel, with sheekel sitting there singular. Feels wrong to an English ear. It's the rule anyway.
Talking in shekels
Money at the market means the shekel, sheekel. When a vendor quotes you, you'll hear a number and then sheekel in the singular, however big the number gets. The price itself, as a word, is si3er, and you'll want it the second you decide to push back on one.
Asking for a kilo, or half of one
Quantities at a produce stall ride on the keelo. To say what you want, lead with , the Palestinian way to say "I want," and name the amount.
- keelo zeetoon — I want a kilo of olives
For a part of a kilo, or for things you count one by one, these three carry most of it:
| Word | Amount |
|---|---|
| nuSS | half (so nuSS keelo is half a kilo) |
| rubu3 | a quarter (rubu3 keelo, a quarter kilo) |
| 7abbe | a single one, for things you count whole |
So biddi 7abbe is "I'll take one" when you're pointing at a melon, not buying it by weight.
Settling il-7saab
You've picked what you want. Now you pay. The bill, the total you owe, is il-7saab. To ask for it, you reach for qaddeesh again:
- qaddeesh il-7saab? — how much is the bill?
Then comes the actual paying. The verb is , to pay, and the cash in your hand is . Hand it over and the vendor gives you back , the change, literally "the rest." As the money and the bag cross in mid-air, you'll both say tfaDDal, the all-purpose here-you-go.
When the price stings
Maybe the number's too high. The word for expensive is ghaali, and its opposite is rkhees. A soft "haada ghaali shwayy" (this is a bit pricey) does more work than a flat no. To fish for a better number, ask if there's anything arkhaS, cheaper.
How hard you push depends on where you're standing. A fixed-price grocer won't budge. A guy with a cart of olives might knock off a couple of shekels just because you asked nicely.
One run-through
Put it together and the whole thing takes about fifteen seconds. You point at the olives and ask 'addeesh il-keelo. He says a number. You wince a little, try ghaali shwayy, maybe fish for something arkhaS. He drops it a shekel or two. You say biddi nuSS keelo, he weighs it out, you ask qaddeesh il-7saab, hand over your maSaari, take your il-baaqi, and walk off with the olives. That's the whole trick.
