#TeamMaha

This is a post about the verb اجى (from fuSHa جاء), which you almost certainly know in the literal sense since it’s such core vocabulary. You might not realise quite how useful this verb can be, though – and that’s why we’ve chosen it to be the next instalment of our verbs I might have known series (see also Təle3/nəzel, zabaT, and this post about useful -aan participles).

Too many dialects

Let’s get the dialect questions out of the way first. This is an irregular verb (more or less) in all Levantine dialects. To avoid repeating ourselves and to save space from being taken up by ugly tables, if you want to know the full conjugation the North Levantine forms can be found here. The South Levantine forms can be found in the PDF on South Levantine verbs. There are no major differences between the Lebanese and Syrian forms or between the Jordanian and Palestinian forms. The main differences between the North and South forms are:

• The alif-hamze beginning all forms (which may be dropped when not stressed) carries a fat7a (i.e. it’s 2a) in South Levantine while in North Levantine the vowel is an ə, pronounced here close to i: 2əja, (2ə)jiina.
• The present tense forms either have a consistent long ii (2ana biiji, inte btiiji…) or a consistent short ə (bəji, btəji) in North Levantine, while in South Levantine the first person singular form has an aa (baaji) in keeping with the normal conjugation of verbs in the south.
• In the North (or at least in Syria) the participle is consistently jaaye, whether masculine or feminine. In the South, it’s consistently jaay.

Literal usages

With that out of the way, let’s talk about usage. There’s obviously the literal usage ‘to come’:

اجى لعندي اليوم الصبح
2əja la-3əndi lyoom @SSəb@7 (S)
He came to my house [or to see me, etc] this morning

By extension, اجى is very often an idiomatic equivalent of ‘be here’ or ‘get there’ in sentences like the following (maybe a nice literal translation is ‘arrive’):

بس تيجي خبرني
bass tiiji khabbirni (P)
As soon as you get here let me know

الاستاذ ما اجى اليوم
@l2əstaaz maa 2əja lyoom (S)
Mr [Karim] isn’t here today

As with other verbs of motion اجى can be combined with a subjunctive to express movement plus purpose (‘came to see…’). This is pretty straightforward but it’s worth noting the nice idiomatic way of saying ‘I’m here to…’:

انا جايه شوف الاستاذ طاهر
2ana jaaye shuuf Taaher
I’m here to see Taher

You can use the noun of instance jayye + ‘here is’ to mean ‘I’m just on my way back from’, ‘I’ve just come back from’ (‘here is my coming from’):

هاي جيتي من المحافظة
hayy jayyti mn @lmu7aafaZa (S)
I’ve just got back from the Provincial Government (offices)

Note that it’s not very idiomatic to ask ‘where do you come from’ in Arabic using the verb اجى, which is best asked with a simple انت منين or just منين, من وين؟ Here are a few of the possible interpretations of the sentences you might (mistakenly) use to try and express this idea:

من وين جاي؟
min ween jaay? (P)
Where’ve you been?
Where are you coming from?
Where are you on your way back from?

بتجي من وين؟
btəji mən ween? (S)
Where does it come (in) from? (e.g. where is it imported from)
Which direction do you come from? Which way do you come? (mən ween = from where = which way, see mən here)

End up in, get on etc

There are quite a few contexts in which اجى expresses more or less the same meaning (of movement) but where ‘come’ is not idiomatic in English. Usually ‘get onto’ or ‘end up in’ covers these:

منيح ما اجت الرصاصة بعينو
mnii7 maa 2əjet l@rSaaSa b3eeno (L)
It’s good the bullet didn’t go in/end up in his eye

اجت المي ع الورقة
2ajat ilmayy 3alwaraga (J)
The water got onto/went on the paper

Get, have

In a very limited sense of get or have – i.e. usually ‘experience’ – اجى often appears in a meaning that is pretty straightforward to understand:

بتجيني نوبات هلع
btijiini nobaat hala3 (J)
I get panic attacks [panic attacks come to me]

الله وحدو بيعلم شو ممكن تجيني أحاسيس و مشاعير
2aLLa wa7do byə3lem shuu məmken təjiini 2a7asiis w masha3iir (S)
only God knows what feelings I might have [= what can come to me (by way of) feelings and feelings]

Note also the sense of ‘receive’, also fairly transparent from the meaning of the verb:

اجاني سكري من حلاوة شوفتك
2əjaani səkkari mən @7leewet shooftek (L)
I got diabetes from how pretty you look [حلاوة = beauty, sweetness – from how ‘sweet’ you look diabetes came to me]

اجتني رسالة من بويا
2ajatni risaale min buuya (J)
I got a message from my dad [= a message from my dad came to me]

About to

اجى can also mean ‘about to’ when used with a subjunctive verb (sometimes combined with la- in Syrian):

جيت اوقع
jiit 2awqe3 (P)
I almost fell, I was about to fall

كنت جايه احكي نفس الحكي
kənt jaaye 2ə7ki nafs @l7aki (L)
I was about to say the same thing! [= I was coming to talk the same talk]

كل ما اجي لإحكي معو بخجل بأجلها لبعدين
kəll ma 2əji la-2ə7ki ma3o bəkhjal b2ajjəla la-ba3deen
Whenever I’m about to (I come to talk) to him I get embarrassed and put it off

Be approximately

اجى is often used to express ‘comes to about’ or ‘is about’:

بجي شي تلاتين ليرة
bəji shi tlaatiin leera
It’d be about 30 lira

Judging an action

اجى also has another nice idiomatic use expressing a value judgement of the action on the part of the speaker. It often expresses that the speaker thinks that the action is unacceptable, presumptuous or brazen:

جيل كامب دافيد اللى شاف الحريه ع ايام جيل 93 جاى يحكم علينا بالاعدام علشان عرفناه طريق الحريه والثورات
jiil kaamb daafiid illi shaaf il7urriyye 3a2iyyaam jiil ittlaate wtis3iin jaay yi7kom 3aleena bil2i3daam 3ashaan 3arrafnaa Tarii2 il7urriyye w@ththawraat (P)
The Camp David generation, who got to experience [saw] freedom, in the days of the generation of 93 have the gall to condemn us to death because we introduced them to the path of freedom and revolutions

هلق جايه تصالح هلق؟
halla2 jaayi tSaale7 halla2? (L)
Oh, now you want to make up? [= coming to make up now] (i.e. it’s too late)

Expressions

Note also the following expressions:

اجى على ‪2əja, 2aja 3ala ‘to fit’ (of clothes)
بتجي بمعنى btəji, btiiji bma3na ‘it means’
بروح وبجي biruu7 w biji ‘comes and goes’ (note the opposite order to English)
الكلمة بتجي لحالها ilkilme btiiji la7aalha, @lkəlme btəji la7aala ‘the word comes on its own’
بتجي ظرف طويل btəji, btiiji Zarf Tawiil ‘it comes as a big envelope’
حمدالله اجت بالحديد ‪7amdilla 2əjet bil7adiid (also mar2et) ‘thank God, only the car was damaged’ [= it happened to the metal, when talking about a car accident]
اجى ع بالي, جاي ع بالي ‪2əja/2aja, jaay(e) 3a baali ‘feel like’ (see this post for more)

A long, long time ago, we did a brief post about the use of ابو in Egyptian to express a certain kind of possession. This post is a specifically Levantine expansion on that one.

‘The one with’, ‘the one wearing’

Very much a شب ابو لحية

Even if you’ve only taken your first few steps in learning Arabic, chances are you know the word ابو abu ‘father of’ – even if it’s only from people’s names. You will probably also have learnt the word أم ‘mother’, at least in fuSHa. (While 2abu is the same in all dialects in this context, its counterpart, ام ‘mother’, is either 2əmm (Sy/Leb), 2imm (Pal or Palestinian-Jordanian) or 2umm (Jor), depending on where you’re from. The first two alternatives are pronounced very similarly.)

What you might not have come across, however, is the idiomatic use of these two words in contexts like the following, where it means ‘the one with’, ‘the one wearing’ etc (and is more or less synonymous with fuSHa ذو and similar to one of the uses of another useful word, تبع):

شفت ام الاحمر؟
shəf@t 2əmm @l2a7mar? (S)
Did you see the one (the girl) in red? [the mother of red]

لا لا ابو العيون الزرقا
la la, 2abu l3ayuun izzar2a (P)
No, no, the one (the guy) with blue eyes [the father of the blue eyes]

ام الجاكيت والبنطلون شفتك واقفة فوق البلكون
2əmm @jjakeet w@lbanTaloon shəftek waa2fe foo2 @lbalkoon (L)
The girl with the jacket and the trousers, I saw you standing on the balcony

All these three examples refer to actual people. But ابو and ام can be used in more or less the same meaning to refer to any masculine or feminine object respectively. Likewise, 2əmm can be used with plurals where feminine singular agreement is permissible:

هات ام الخمسين ليرة
haat 2əmm @lkhamsiin leera (S)
Give me the fifty lira one [bottle, قنينة, fem.]

هات ابو الخمسين ليرة
haat 2abu lkhamsiin leera (S)
Give me the fifty lira ones [courgettes, كوسا, masc. collective]

ناس ام وجهين
naas 2umm wijheen (J)
Two-faced people [plural]

Nicknames

ابو and ام are also used, as you probably know, in conjunction with the eldest (male) child’s name to form common terms of address.People with children are usually known by these names rather than their first name, and some people are sensitive about their wives’ or mothers’ actual first names in particular being used instead of this form. Note that although this sort of name is formally called كنية kunya in fuSHa, in Syrian كنية kənye usually refers to the surname instead and these names fall under the general category of لقب laqab ‘nickname’. You’re more likely to hear people 2abu and 2əmm 3ammaar for example.

Some men who don’t have children still have nicknames of this kind, usually derived from their father’s name (on the assumption that your oldest male child will be named after your dad, which is common).

ابو and ام are also used with a form derived from people’s first names (usually CuuC) to form nicknames entirely unrelated to the names of their children:

ابو اللول abu lluul < lu2ayy
ابو اللوس abu lluus < 2ilyaas
ام السوس imm issuus < sawsan, su3aaad

Some men’s names have associated nicknames not derived in this way. Usually this is because of a historical or culturally important figure with a child of the same name:

ابو علي abu 3ali < 7seen (Husayn, i.e. because of Ali Abu Talib, whose son was named Husayn, whose son was thus named 3ali)

Nicknames of this kind are also often used as pseudonyms in artistic or political contexts.