How to say "to travel" in Arabic
False friendMeaningto travel
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
sāfaraסאפר
سافر
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
nasaنَاسَا
How the two words are related
Sounds like a Hebrew word but means something else — handle with care.
Arabic root
س-ف-رMind the same mirror trap as the noun سفر, safar 'journey': it looks exactly like Hebrew ספר, 'book' (root ס-פ-ר). sāfara, 'he traveled', is that same root in verb form — unrelated to Hebrew's 'telling, counting' sense, though Arabic does keep سِفْر, sifr, for a weighty scriptural tome — a word it borrowed from Aramaic, Hebrew's cousin — so the roots meet again on the shelf.
Related Hebrew word:ספרseferسِفِر
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 says sāfir.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija: sāfer.
In a phrase
He traveled to Egypt last summer