# Egyptian Arabic: وقت كتير



## laneylady

Please explain this construction


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## Mighis

Can you put it in a sentence?

For example : ماتاخذ من _وقتك كثير
_This won't take much of your time


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## laneylady

_ma'andish wat'ik ketir_ or your sentence transliterated  is fine. It's the_ wat'ik _(=il?) I don't get


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## cherine

Laneylady,

Please check your sentence because it doesn't look correct. If you say ma3andiish, it's "I don't have", then the pronoun in "wa2tek" refers to (you), so there must be a mistake here.

Anyway, wa2t is time, ketiir means much.


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## J.F. de TROYES

laneylady said:


> _ma'andish wat'ik ketir_ or your sentence transliterated is fine. It's the_ wat'ik _(=il?) I don't get



The 2nd sing. possessive suffix -ak is added to the noun _waqt_ (or _wa't_ in Egyptian) , time . So _wa'tak_ means _your time_ ; _much time _would be _waqt ketiir. _I am afraid that _ma'andish wa'tik ketir _does'nt make sense.


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## Mighis

J.F. de TROYES said:


> The 2nd sing. possessive suffix -ak is added to the noun _waqt_ (or _wa't_ in Egyptian) , time . So _wa'tak_ means _your time_ ; _much time _would be _waqt ketiir. _I am afraid that _ma'andish wa'tik ketir _does'nt make sense.


Why not? Have no much time for you..


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## fdb

Maybe what you heard is _waʼtə ketīr_, with the usual euphonic vowel between the two words?


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## laneylady

What I heard, I wrote..perhaps I heard wrong ..Mais expliquez toujours, s.v.p.


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## إسكندراني

مش ح تاخد من وقتك كتير
it won't take much of your time
مش ح تاخد من وقتي كتير
it won't take much of my time
مش ح تاخد من وقته كتير
it won't take much of his time

Any vowel in the final position is usually very short in Egyptian (wa2t-i-ktiir) not (wa2tii ketiir).


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## laneylady

Still no useful (for me) explantation...let's stop quuibbling over transliteration as there is no absolute right or wrong here....What I wrote >   correct pronounciation for me.  And  we have now wandered far from my original question....I wanted to understand the construction of "i do not have much time"  but alas, I guess that is not to be.


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## إسكندراني

No need to be melodramatic.
مش a particle that negates the sentence which follows it.
 ح puts the verb in future tense
 تاخد it (f.) takes
 من from
 وقتك your time (addressing a female because it's with a kasra (i)k).
 كتير a lot
A similar sentence: مش ح تاخد من وقتك حاجة


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## cherine

laneylady said:


> Still no useful (for me) explantation...let's stop quuibbling over transliteration as there is no absolute right or wrong here....


It's not about the right or wrong transliteration system, it's that your sentence is puzzling because it's mixing pronouns (talking about one self, than about another person). So, before blaming others for failing to explain, you may need to revise what you heard.


> What I wrote >   correct pronounciation for me.  And  we have now wandered far from my original question....I wanted to understand the construction of "i do not have much time"  but alas, I guess that is not to be.


I do not have much time is: ma3andish wa2t(e)ktiir.
The word wa2t, followed by ketiir, are sort of merged together in the common speech and become wa2tektiir.


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## laneylady

Finally, Cherine to the rescue! Thank you!


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## laneylady

No melodrama, merely frustraion.  I simply wrote what I heard and others inserted pronouns though I believe I had already indicated that I wanted an explanation of _m'3andish waatik ketir. _Anyway, thanks to Cherine I finally have the explanation ..


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## Tracer

I don’t mean to prolong the agony but I think you still don’t have it quite right. 

 In your final posting, you say *“waatik ketir”* as if that’s the answer.   Problem is, “waatik” doesn’t mean anything which is what caused the confusion in the first place.  You definitely “heard it wrong” as you suggested a while back. 

Let see if I can steer you in the right direction:  Much of what I say will be a repetition of what Cherine wrote….I’m just saying it differently.

1.  “Time” in standard Arabic is WAQT.  However, in Egyptian Arabic, the Q sound is generally replaced by a glottal stop, usually transcribed as ('), so WAQT  is written and pronounced  as WA’T (but definitely not WAAT).  _(I assume you know what I mean when I say "glottal stop").
_
That’s number 1.  

2.  Number 2 is the “K”.  This (K) belongs to the second word (KETIR) which means “a lot”.  There aren’t  2 Ks….there’s only one.  So your WAATIK is also incorrect as far as the “K” goes.  That “K” is the first letter of the next word..... WA'T has no "k".

So you have WA’T KETIR.  Now here’s where it gets tricky:

3.  Many Arabic dialects  (Egyptian being one of them) do NOT allow 3 consonants to be pronounced together which is what would happen with “WA’T KETIR”.   *First* consonant is the ('), *second* is the (T) and *3d* is the (K).

[I know it’s kind of hard to accept (') as a consonant, but it is….or rather, here it acts like a consonant).

4.  To overcome this 3 consonant trio, many Arabic dialects ADD a prosthetic (helping) vowel (usually -e- or -i-)  between the 1st and 2nd  or the 2nd and 3d consonants so that you get  *(WA’T -e- KETIR)  *  which is probably “what you heard”……but it is not  *(WAATIK KETIR).  *

I agree that these 2 renditions sound almost identical to non-natives, but to native speakers, they sound very different.

I hope that cleared it up for you a little more.


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## laneylady

So I non native  did hear what I heard  even though you transcribe it differently.  w/o audio no way to know what I heard, mish que da?


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