What does “الحواس الخمس” mean in Lebanese Arabic?

شرح الحواس الخمس باللهجة اللبنانية

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A1 Arabic listening practice · Levantine Arabic · Picked for people who know a little

💡 Did you know?
الحواس الخمس (al-ḥawāss al-khamse)
Lebanese Arabic sense vocabulary
the five senses — sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch — in Lebanese dialect

In Lebanese Arabic the word for a sensory faculty is حصه (ḥasse), a spoken contraction of the Modern Standard Arabic حاسّة (ḥāssa). Drop the hamza, shorten the vowel, and you get the form Lebanese speakers actually use. The five: حصه البصر (sight), حصه الشم (smell), حصه السمع (hearing), حصه الذوق (taste), and حصه اللمس (touch). Learn حصه and you unlock the whole set at once.

The clip anchors each sense with a vivid everyday example — seeing the colours of roses, smelling cologne with منخاري (my nostrils), hearing a guitar riff, tasting something مالح (salty) or حلو (sweet), and feeling whether a fabric is ناعمه (soft) or خشنه (rough). It closes by running through all five with an apple: you see its colour, bite it and hear the crunch, smell it, taste it, and feel its skin. The contrast with MSA matters for learners moving between registers: ḥāssa is the written, formal form you’ll read; ḥasse is what you’ll hear in Beirut.

How common are the words?

How common are the words in this A1 Arabic listening practice video?

71.7%
of words are in the top 2,000 most common Arabic words
Most of the words in this video are common Arabic words.

How common in Arabic

54.2%
Top 1,000
71.7%
Top 2,000
92.5%
Top 5,000

How common in spoken Arabic

92.2%
Top 1,000
98.4%
Top 2,000
100%
Top 5,000

Harder words in this video

These words are harder than A1. Here is what they mean.

التفاحه
6×
Not in top 5,000
حصه
6×
Not in top 5,000
portion
ريحه
5×
Not in top 5,000
smell
يشوف
5×
Not in top 5,000
he sees
بشو
4×
Not in top 5,000
what with
الحواس الخمس
1×
five senses as a concept

Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.

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