You're three minutes into a serveece to Ramallah and the man next to you has run out of weather. Now comes the real question. shu bti3mal? What do you do?
It's the icebreaker you'll hear everywhere. At a wedding in Nablus, in the barber's chair, waiting in line for knafeh. Someone wants your line of work, and it pays to have the answer loaded.
The easy part: saying what you do barely counts as a sentence.
You don't need a verb to answer
English makes you say "I am a manager." Palestinian throws out the "am." You put ana (I) next to the job and stop. There's no word for "is" to wedge in the middle.
- ana mudeer — I'm a manager
- ana m3allem — I'm a teacher
- hiyye doktowra — she's a doctor
- huwwe shoofeer — he's a driver
Two words and you're done. Just the person and the job, side by side.
The words for the work
Here's the lineup you'll actually use.
| English | Palestinian |
|---|---|
| manager, boss | |
| teacher | m3allem |
| doctor | |
| doctor (the formal word) | Tabeeb |
| employee, clerk | muwaZZaf |
| trader, merchant | taajer |
| driver | shoofeer |
| farmer | |
| greengrocer | khuDarji |
| nurse | mumarriDa |
doktowr and Tabeeb both mean doctor. doktowr is what everyone says out loud, to the family physician and to the professor with a PhD alike. Tabeeb is the formal, textbook word, so you'll meet it more in writing than in speech.
He's a m3allem, she's a m3allme
m3allem is a male teacher. m3allme is a female one. The whole change is a small -a tacked onto the end, which lands here as -e. That same ending turns most jobs feminine.
| Job | a man | a woman |
|---|---|---|
| teacher | m3allem | m3allme |
| doctor | doktowra | |
| employee | muwaZZaf | muwaZZafe |
| trader | taajer | taajra |
| farmer | fallaa7a |
The tail sometimes sounds like a broad -a and sometimes softens to -e, depending on the letter in front of it. doktowra and fallaa7a keep the -a (after that r and that 7), while m3allme and muwaZZafe go to -e. Your ear sorts this out long before any rule does.
One job in the list above is already feminine: mumarriDa, nurse, because most nurses are women. A man in the same job flips it back to mumarriD.
Asking someone else
Turn it around. To a man it's shu bti3mal? To a woman the verb grows a tail, bti3mali, so you'd say shu bti3mali?
There's a second way that's just as common: shu shughlak? Literally "what's your work?" That -ak on the end is the same "your" ending that turns beet into beetak, the one you hang on family words too.
Want the place rather than the title? ween btishtaghil? Where do you work?
Talking about where you work
When the small talk keeps going, you'll need the verb for working, ishtaghal. bashtaghil fi madrase is "I work at a school." bashtaghil fi shirke is "I work at a company."
Run your own place? Skip the job title and reach for 3indi: 3indi dukkaan, "I have a shop." The plain noun for work is , with that little helper vowel you can hear in the middle.
Out of work for now? ma bashtaghilsh hallaq covers it, and 3am badawwir 3ala shughel tells them you're looking.
doktowr, 'ustaaz, and the polite titles
A couple of these words come back as titles you'll get called yourself. doktowr covers far more than your physician. It's the respectful tag for anyone with a PhD, and people will sometimes hand it to you just to be warm. 'ustaaz is the polite "sir" for a man, and it's also what a schoolteacher answers to in class.
So when the barber calls you ya ustaaz, he isn't asking about your job. He's just being nice.
