How to say "island" in Arabic
Shifted meaningMeaningisland
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
jazīraג'זירה
جزيرة
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
iإِي
How the two words are related
Same root as a Hebrew word, but the meaning drifted over the centuries.
Arabic root
ج-ز-رHebrew root
ג-ז-רJazīra comes straight from jazara, 'to cut' — an island is simply land the sea has cut off. Hebrew גזר (gazar) keeps that very sense: to cut, and by extension to decree (a court's גזר דין is literally a 'cut verdict'). You already know this root from the news: al-Jazeera, 'the island/peninsula,' the network named for the Arabian Peninsula.
Related Hebrew word:גזרgazarگَازَار
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On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Hard g in Cairo: gizīra — as in Zamalek's il-Gizīra.
In a phrase
a small island
Plural
irregular broken plural; the country Algeria, al-Jazāʾir, is literally 'the islands' — named for the islets off Algiers