How do different Arabic dialects say “very”?

كلمات وتعابير من لهجات عربية مختلفة

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B1 Arabic listening practice · Arabic · Curated for intermediate learners

💡 Did you know?
بزاف / قوي / مرة (bezzaf / awi / marra)
Arabic dialect intensifiers, "very"
Three different ways to say 'very' that mark a speaker’s home region in seconds

Arabic dialects each pick their own all-purpose intensifier for very, and the choice tells you almost instantly which region a speaker is from. Maghrebi Arabic uses بزاف (bezzaf). Egyptian Arabic uses قوي (awi), sometimes خالص (khaliṣ). Levantine Arabic uses كتير (ktīr). Khaleeji Arabic uses مرة (marra) or وايد (wāyid). Yemeni Arabic uses شديد (shadīd). Modern Standard Arabic uses جداً (jiddan), the textbook word most learners meet first but few people actually say casually. Arabic-dialect comedy reels love stacking these together to riff on regional differences.

In this clip, a creator runs through bezzaf, qawi, marra and other dialect equivalents back-to-back.

Vocabulary frequency

How common is the vocabulary in this B1 Arabic listening practice listening practice?

61.5%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Arabic words
Based on this reel’s transcript, most of the vocabulary is high-frequency, everyday Arabic.

General Arabic frequency

61.5%
Top 1,000
61.5%
Top 2,000
84.6%
Top 5,000

Spoken Arabic frequency

82.4%
Top 1,000
88.2%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Words above this video’s level

Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s B1 level.

بشويش
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
تكفى
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
سولف
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
عيت
2×
Rare / outside top 5,000
ارغي
1×
Rare / outside top 5,000

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.

★Where you’ll hear this

Explore Arabic Comprehensible Input on Reelang

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