You're at a coffee place in Ramallah and the guy behind the counter is waiting. You point and say biddi qahwe. That's it. You just asked for something in Arabic, and there wasn't a verb anywhere in the sentence.
Because Palestinian doesn't have a verb for "to want." What it has is a tiny word, bidd, and a set of endings you might already know.
There's no verb for "want"
In English "want" is a verb. You conjugate it: I want, he wants, she wanted. Palestinian skips all that. It takes bidd and glues a personal ending onto the back, the same little tails that mean my, your, his on a noun.
So is literally something like "my want," and it does the job of "I want." Swap the ending and you've moved to a different person. MSA would reach for a real verb here, ureedu. Palestinian just hangs an ending on bidd (one more place the two Arabics part ways, see Palestinian Arabic vs MSA).
The endings you already know
Here's why this set comes cheap. The endings on bidd are the exact ones you put on a noun to show possession, and on 3ind to say you have something.
| ending | "...house" | "...have" | "...want" |
|---|---|---|---|
-i (my / I) | beeti | ||
-o (his / he) | beeto | 3indo | biddo |
-ha (her / she) | beetha | 3indha | bidha |
If you can say beeti (my house) and 3indi (I have), then biddi is free. Same -i. Same -o for "his." Same -ha for "her."
One small wrinkle worth your eye: biddi, biddak and biddo keep a double d, but the moment the ending starts with a consonant, the cluster eases off and you drop one. So it's bidha (she wants), not biddha, and bidna (we want), not biddna. Your mouth does this on its own.
The whole set
| person | "want" |
|---|---|
| I | |
| you (m) | biddak |
| you (f) | biddik |
| he | biddo |
| she | bidha |
| we | bidna |
| you (pl) | bidkum |
| they | bidhum |
Eight forms, one pattern. Drill them out loud as a block and they stick faster than you'd think.
Wanting a thing
Put a noun straight after bidd and you've asked for it. No "a," no verb, nothing in between.
- biddi qahwe — I want coffee
- biddi mayy — I want water
- biddo shaay — he wants tea
To turn any of these into a question, you don't change a single word. You just lift your voice at the end. biddak ishi? means "do you want something?" Same words as the statement, the question lives entirely in the tone.
Wanting to do something
To say what you want to do, put a bare verb after bidd. Bare meaning no b- on the front, the plain "that I go" form.
- biddi aroo7 — I want to go
- biddo iroo7 — he wants to go
- bidna niroo7 — we want to go
Notice the verb carries its own person marker too. biddi already says "I," and aroo7 (the a- form) says "I" again. They have to match. biddo lines up with iroo7, bidna with niroo7. Both halves of the phrase point at the same person, once from bidd and once from the verb.
When you don't want
Negating bidd works like negating any verb. You wrap it in ma...sh.
- — I don't want
- ma biddoosh — he doesn't want
So when a waiter asks biddak ishi taani? you can wave it off with ma biddeesh, shukran.
biddi is also "going to"
Here's the bonus. That same bidd pulls double duty as a soft future. Depending on context, biddo iroo7 is either "he wants to go" or "he's going to go." bidna niroo7 covers both "we want to leave" and "we're about to leave."
Usually the situation tells you which. Someone grabbing their keys and saying biddi aroo7 isn't reporting a feeling. They're already halfway out the door.
