Beginner - Levantine: Latest fashion

great job!

Thanks for letting us know, maidaothanh!

I've got a couple questions on this lesson.
- I've seen the words زي and ازباء for fashion/s before. Are those words in common use in the Levant, or do people mostly stick with the French derived موضة? ًWhen would someone use زي versus its plural ازياء?
- I notice that past tense verbs are different in Levantine. "fahimit" versus "fahimtu". Is there are rule on how this works so that I can know how to conjugate verbs to the past properly in Levantine?

Why use numbers in words? I don't understand

ma3ik?

@ irishguy74

The numbers represent Arabic letters which have no counterparts in the Roman alphabet. If you key in "Arabic chat alphabet" (with or without inverted commas) and run a Google search, you'll find all the information you need (including an article in the English version of Wikipedia). Incidentally, I'm from Ireland, too, but I'm now permanently resident in Germany.

Best wishes
Desmond

Thank you very Much Desmond. much appreciated.

Is the numerical representative of the pronunciation of the Arabic letter? For instance ayn uses 7. Is 7 pronounced ayn/ghayn? غ

apologies, I meant ha ح and not غ/ع

irishguy ... yes 7 stands for ha ح. That is ... it's a breathy version of H that sounds a bit like you are breathing on your glasses. At first it isn't easy to tell it from a normal h هـ but this does become easier with time.

The same goes for 6 ط and 9 ص, which are "heavier" versions of t and s respectively.

3 and 3' represent ع and غ

8 is used for ق, and 2 for ء , though this isn't very common in actual use.

Some arab guys use this for text messages and for example facebook when they don't have easy access to an arabic keyboard, but it's clumsy and most of them don't actually like it.

@ maasbar Thank you very much.. I think I understand it now.

Thanks, Desmond, for the clarification re: the numbers in Lebanese writing. In my experience, it's very common for people in the Levant to write with Roman rather than Arabic letters and the numbers have become a kind of unofficial standard, especially on Facebook, as you point out maasbar.

Hexagonmoon, as I understand it, the word زي is typically used to mean "garb" or uniform and not so much to describe fashion, even though that is one of its meanings. Therefore, زي and ازياء are a simple singular and plural pair. I've never heard either of them used on the street, where the overwhelmingly preferred word seems to be موضة.

Verbs are conjugated slightly differently in Levantine than they are in MSA, as you'll notice from previous Levantine lessons. Perhaps you (or another listener) would like to try conjugating a verb in Levantine and posting it here? Of course, I'll then make any necessary corrections/answer any questions that come up.

Hope that helps! =)

But am I correct in thinking that "fashion design" as an art/profession, would be "تصميم الازياء" ? Or "fashion show" as "عرض ازياء"?

Yes, in this case, the standard terms are the one used.