In Syrian , Lebanese , Palestinian and Jordanian Arabic, there are many ways to express ownership or possession.
By analyzing thousands of interactive video transcripts on Playaling, we’ve mapped out how native speakers actually express ownership in the real world.
Let’s break them down one by one, starting with the most common.
ي
(my) The most basic way to show possession in Levantine Arabic is to attach a possessive suffix directly to the end of a noun.
Take the word بيت
(house). To say “my,” attach ي:
بيتي
(my house)
For “your,” attach ك. The vowel before it changes depending on whether you are speaking to a male or a female:
بيتَك
(your house, to a male)
بيتِك
(your house, to a female)
For “his,” attach ه or و. Both are pronounced the same:
بيته / بيتو
(his house)
For “her,” attach ها. In everyday speech, the “h” is often dropped:
بيتها
or بيتا
(her house)
For groups, attach نا, كم or كو, and هم:
بيتنا
(our house)
بيتكم
or بيتكو
(your house, plural)
بيتهم
(their house)
In Syria and Lebanon, you’ll often hear بيتكن
(your house) and بيتهن
(their house) for the plural forms instead.
These same endings attach to إلـ, تبع, عند, مع and other words in this guide, so once you know them, you’re ready for the rest.
إلي
(the Levantine way to say “mine”) The most common way to say “mine” in Levantine Arabic is إلي
, as in هاد إلي
(This is mine).
The preposition إلـ
shows who something belongs to. On its own, it doesn’t mean much. But when you attach a pronoun ending, it means “belonging to me,” “belonging to you” and so on.
To say “mine,” you simply add the ي to make it إلي
:
هاد الموبايل إلي
(This phone is mine.)
When you ask someone, the ending changes depending on whether you are speaking to a male or a female:
هاي الشنتة إلَك؟
(Is this bag yours? to a male)
هاي الشنتة إلِك؟
(Is this bag yours? to a female)
You will also hear the other forms:
إلو
(his)
إلها
(hers)
إلنا
(ours)
إلكن
or إلكم
(yours, plural)
إلهن
or إلهم
(theirs)
Jordanians and Palestinians usually use إلكم and إلهم while Syrians and Lebanese usually use إلكن and إلهن.
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More than “mine” Levantine speakers also use إلـ
to talk about family and relationships:
إلو أخ بألمانيا
(He has a brother in Germany.)
And to say how long something has been going on:
إلي سنة هون
(I’ve been here for a year.)
إلي ساعة عم استناك
(I’ve been waiting for you for an hour.)
تبعي
(mine) In real-world Levantine speech, تبع
comes up about as often as إلـ, making it one of the most common ways to say “mine” across the Levant. It takes the same pronoun endings:
تبعي
(mine)
تبعَك
(yours, to a male)
تبعِك
(yours, to a female)
تبعه / تبعو
(his)
تبعها
(hers)
تبعنا
(ours)
تبعكم
(yours, plural)
تبعهم
(theirs)
For example:
هادا البيت تبعي
(This house is mine.)
Matching the owned item The form of تبع
is masculine singular, but conveniently, it can be used for any noun irrespective of gender or number (singular or plural).
It can also change form to match the thing being owned. With a feminine item, it can become تبعت
:
هادي السيارة مش تبعتي
(This car isn’t mine.)
سيارتي تبعت الشغل
(My work car.)
With a plural, you may hear تبعوت
or تبعون
. They’re interchangeable and work for both masculine and feminine plurals:
هدول المعلمات تبعوت المدرسة
(These are the school’s teachers.)
هدول الكتب مش تبعوني
(These books aren’t mine.)
The feminine form works with plurals, too:
هدول الكتب مش تبعتي
(These books aren’t mine.)
To keep things simple, use the masculine singular form (تبع
) for everything and just recognize the other forms. If native speakers often don’t bother to conjugate تبع, why should you? That’ll make it easier to remember and use.
There’s one important caveat though: the noun before تبع
and related forms must be definite. In other words, the noun must take either ال
or a possessive suffix, like the ones listed above in the beginning of this article, or it must be a name (a proper noun). Otherwise, instead of تبع, better to use an alternative from this article instead.
Linking two nouns تبع also links one thing to another , to make clear which one you mean:
الباب تبع المكتب
(The door belonging to the office.)
المكتب تبع أحمد
(Ahmed’s desk.)
لـ
(belonging to)
When the owner is a name or a noun, Levantine speakers attach لـ directly to it, just like speakers of other dialects:
الكتاب لأحمد
(The book is Ahmed’s.)
With a pronoun ending, though, Levantine speakers switch to إلـ
. So instead of لي
, you’ll hear إلي
.
لإلي
(for me and mine) لإلـ
is simply لـ + إلـ. Levantine speakers use لإلـ interchangeably with just إلـ by itself, or to stress who something belongs to:
هاي الهدية لإلك
(This gift is for you.)
هاد الكرسي لإلي
(This chair is mine!)
So what’s the difference? Use إلي
to simply say something is yours, and لإلي
when you mean “for me” or want to add emphasis.
In this Jordanian clip, the speaker combines راتبي (my salary) and لإلي (mine/for me) to double down on ownership. She uses this phrasing while discussing her ideal husband to emphasize that he shouldn’t touch her money. عندي
(I have)
While إلي answers “whose is it?” عندي is how you say “I have.” It comes from عند
, which literally means “at” or “with,” plus a pronoun ending:
عندي بيت
(I have a house.)
When you ask someone, the ending changes depending on whether you are speaking to a male or a female:
عندَك وقت؟
(Do you have time? to a male)
عندِك وقت؟
(Do you have time? to a female)
عند works the same way across Arabic dialects.
معي
(I have it on me) Use مع
with a pronoun ending for things you are carrying right now:
معك مصاري؟
(Do you have money on you?)
ما معي شاحن
(I don’t have a charger with me.)
صاحب
(the owner of) To talk about the owner of something, put صاحب
before it:
مين صاحب هالسيارة؟
(Who’s the owner of this car?)
In this Playaling video إلي عندك
(you owe me) Put إلـ
and عند
together, and you get a very Levantine way to talk about debts:
إلي عندك عشرين دينار
(You owe me 20 dinars.)
The way to think about and memorize this construction is “you have” 20 dinars “for me” (إلي), so literally: “For me, you have 20 dinars.”
بملك
(I own) Based on Playaling’s video library , native speakers rarely use the verb ملك
(to own) for small items like phones, reserving it almost exclusively for major property:
بملك محل
(I own a shop.)
In the negative, it’s also a common way to say you have no money or assets at all:
ما بملك شي
(I don’t own anything.)
You’ll also hear the noun ملك
, which means “property,” especially when talking about homes:
البيت ملك
(The house is owned, not rented.)
When a young man asks for a girl’s hand in marriage, her family will often ask him:
شو بتملك؟
(What do you own?)
In this Jordanian clip , a man shares his dream of owning a بيت ملك, which breaks down to بيت (a house) + ملك (owned), meaning a home of his own rather than a rented one. For everyday things, stick with عندي
or إلي
instead.
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