How to say "heart" in Arabic
New wordMeaningheart
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
qalbקלב
قلب
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
levلِڤ
How the two words are related
No Hebrew relative — learn it fresh.
Arabic root
ق-ل-بQalb has no Hebrew relative — but it guards the most famous trap in Arabic class: pronounce it with a plain Israeli k and you have said kalb, 'dog' (a true cognate of כלב!). The deep ق is all that separates qalbī 'my heart' from kalbī 'my dog'.
Learn it
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 pronounces ق as a glottal stop: ʾalb.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo too: ʾalb; ya ʾalbi — 'my heart', i.e. darling.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija keeps the q: qelb.
In a phrase
My heart is with you.
Plural
broken plural CuCūC, the most common plural pattern