How to say "to say" in Arabic
Shifted meaningMeaningto say
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
qālaקאל
قال
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
amarأَمَار
How the two words are related
Same root as a Hebrew word, but the meaning drifted over the centuries.
Arabic root
ق-و-لHebrew root
ק-ו-לArabic ق-و-ل 'to say' is traced to the same Semitic root as Hebrew קול (voice) — what you say is what your voice does. Hebrew kept only the noun; Arabic uses it mainly as a verb, alongside the noun qawl (a saying).
Related Hebrew word:קולkolكُول
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On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Levantine · Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria
Urban Levantine turns qāf into a glottal stop: qāla becomes ʾāl.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo too: ʾāl; biyʾūl — 'he says'.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija famously says gāl, with a hard g: gāl liya — 'he told me'; kaygūl — 'he says'.
In a phrase
He told the truth