How to say "to kill" in Arabic
CognateMeaningto kill
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
qatalaקתל
قتل
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
haragهَارَاگ
How the two words are related
Same Semitic root, same meaning — you already know this word.
Arabic root
ق-ت-لHebrew root
ק-ט-לThe root is real in Hebrew, just nearly extinct there: קטל, 'to kill', surfaces only a handful of times in the Bible (Job 13:15, Psalm 139:19) and reads as poetic or Aramaic-flavored — everyday Hebrew almost always says הרג instead. Aramaic is where this root truly thrives (it is the ordinary word for 'kill' throughout Targum and Talmud, and shows up in Israeli Hebrew via the loan קטלני, 'lethal'). Arabic qatala kept it as the plain, everyday verb.
Related Hebrew word:קטלkatalكَاتَال
Learn it
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
Cairo turns the qāf into a glottal stop: ʾatal.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija keeps the q and drops the vowel: qtel.
In a phrase
He killed the snake with a stick