How to say "short" in Arabic

Cognate

Meaningshort

Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic

قَصِير

qaṣīrקציר

قصير

Hebrew · Modern Hebrew

קצר

katsarكَاتْسَار

How the two words are related

Cognate

Same Semitic root, same meaning — you already know this word.

Arabic root

ق-ص-ر

Hebrew root

ק-צ-ר

Same root as Hebrew katsar (קצר), 'short' — a perfect letter-for-letter match: qāf↔qof, ṣād↔tsadi, rāʾ↔resh.

How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.

Levantine · Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria

قَصِير

aṣīrאציר

Urban Levantine turns qāf into a glottal stop: aṣīr.

Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta

قُصَيَّر

ʾuṣayyarאציר

Cairo uses the diminutive shape with a glottal stop for qāf: ʾuṣayyar.

Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes

قْصِير

qṣīrקציר

وَقْت قَصِير

waqt qaṣīrוקת קציר

a short time

قِصَار

qiṣārקצאר

broken plural CiCāC — like كبير→كبار

قَصِيرَة

qaṣīraקצירה