Thursday

Egyptian Saying About Men and Money

Every culture has sayings about money. I learned this one while watching عايزة أتجوز on MBC's website. The show is about a girl who can't find a husband. The context for the clip is that she finally meets a man who wants to marry her. He's a trash man (زبّال) and really annoying, but he has a lot of money because he owns the trash company. She tries to convince herself that money is all that matters to her with this phrase: الراجل ما يعيبوش إلا جيبه (arragil ma ya'eeboosh illa gaybu) which means, "A man has no shame except his pocket." Basically, it doesn't matter what a guy is like as long as he has money. Here's the clip for some context and how to pronounce it:




إللي قبلنا قالو, الراجل ما يعيبوش إلا جيبه. عندهم حق. الصراحة, عندهم حق. اه, اه, اصلا هيفيد بايه بقى التوافق في المستوى الإجتماعي و الثقافي و التعليمي و الكلام الفارغ ده هيفيد بايه؟ أهم حاجة الشبكة بكم و الفرح فين و بعد الجواز هنتغدى ايه انهرده و هنتفسح فين الاسبوع ده و هنصيف فين السنادي. أه

Those before us said, a man has no shame except his pocket. They were right. Frankly, they were right. Yes, yes, I mean what good is a sharing a similar social, cultural, or educational level and this empty talk, what good is it? The most important thing is how much is the engagement present and where will the wedding party be and after the wedding where are we going to eat today and where are we going out this week and where are we going to have summer vacation this year? Yes.

عيب - shame
توافق - matching or on similar level
هيفيد بايه؟ - what good is it? literally "it will benefit by what?"
الشبكة - wedding gift
الفرح - wedding party. Also means happiness.
انهرده - today (Egyptian). Comes from النهار هذا
تفسّح - to go out, like out on the town
صيّف - to take summer vacation
السنادي - this year (Egyptian). Comes from السنة هذه



This clip is when the trash man is asking Ola (عُلا) to marry him. He's listing his qualifications.

الراجل ما يعيبوش إلا جيبه و أنا جيبي مليان

A man has no shame except his pocket, and my pocket is full. (He's rich.)

6 comments:

Shiri said...

Hi,
I've been going over the posts in this blog for a couple of months now, and it has benefited me a lot, so I thought I might repay by telling you about a couple of sources you may not know about.

The first is شغل عرب. It's a comedy about Jewish-Arab relations in Israel written by a Palestinian Israeli. It's half in Hebrew and half in Palestinian Arabic, but the parts in Hebrew are subtitled in Palestinian Arabic. It used to be available online, but it seems like they took it down. I have both seasons, so if you have a place I can upload it to or a way I can transfer this to you, I'd be happy to. You seem to be low on Palestinian Arabic materials. It's also a pretty good tv show.

The second source is much smaller and you might have heard about it:
Beirut I love you (I love you not):
http://www.beirutiloveu.com/
As you can expect, it's in Lebanese. There are fewer than 30 episodes, and they're short, but it's something. The script is not the best, but it's OK.

Unknown said...

Aywa, al musalsal da 3agibni awy, wa al 3ibaara Helwa, ka 3aadatan, shukran wa 'shTa 3aleek

Anonymous said...

the book this series is based on (it has the same title) by ghada abdel aal is a great way to get into written egytpian aamiyya. i'm glad that she has had this much success, she's very nice.

Anonymous said...

al tawafoq doesn't mean to excel, it means to match, as in both having the same social/economical/educational level.

The Arabic Student said...

Shiri, thanks for the resources. I hadn't heard of them before. They look really useful.

EgyptianArabic, I agree with you. It's one of the best Arabic shows I've seen.

Anon1, didn't know it was based on a book. Thanks for the info.

Anon2, you're right. I was thinking تفوّق instead of توافق . I'll change it. Thanks much for the correction.

Kanika said...

In totality the post & shiri's comment make it a complete post!
Awesome to read-
With the author description alongwith I hardly used google translation!