100 Useful Arabic Words in Sudan

Note: This post is part of a series on what Khartoum is like.  It is intended for anyone coming to Sudan who wants to learn more and get advice on various topics before travelling here, and anyone else interested.

I'm so grateful to my Sudanese colleagues and friends who have so patiently helped me learn their language and given me encouragement even when I didn't make a lot of progress.  I'm especially grateful for their help because I started from scratch, without the help of books, etc., and they brought me from knowing nothing to where I am now (although I'm not sure where that is).

Because I originally learned from friends instead of from books, I got to learn words that were immediately practical for me.  Here are 100 words I find useful and may be useful for anyone when first arriving in Sudan. I am indebted to my dear Arabic teacher for graciously reviewing them. (These words are in the Sudanese accent.)

Numbers
1	Wahid
2	Itneen
3	Talata
4	Arba3a*
5	Khamsa
6	Sitta
7	Sab3a
8	Tamanya
9	Tis3a
10	3ashara
11	Hidasher
12	Itnasher
Greetings
Peace to you	Assalam alaikum
And to you, peace	Wa alaikum assalam
How are you?	Kaif? (literally: how)
I’m great	Tamaam
I’m fine	Kwayis/kwaysa
[I’m well] praise to God	Alhamdulillah
Fantastic/100%	Meya meya
Common Verbs
I am going	Mashi/masha
I want	Dayer/dayra
You said	Gulta/gulti
I thought	Fakarta
I ate	Akalta
We live	Sakneen
I have	3indi
Give (me)	Jeeb/Jeebi (first to males, second to females)
I work at	Shagala fi
Yes/No
Yes	Aiwa
No	La
Not (negation)	Ma
Pronouns
I	Ana
He	Hua
She	Hia
They	Hum
We	Nihna
You, you plural	Inta/inti, intu
Question Words
What?	Shinu?
Where?	Wain?
When?	Metain?
Who?	Minu?
How much?	Bi Kam?
How?	Kaif?
Prepositions
In	Fi
With	M3a, Be
From	Min
Without	Bedun
Inside	Juwa
Outside	Barrah
Beside	Janb
Before	Gabli
After	Ba3ad
Directions
Right	Yameen
Left	Shamal
Straight/directly	Tawali
Measures of Time
Minute	Dageega
Hour	Sa3a
Day	Youm
Month	Shahar
Year	Sana
Time	Zaman
Days of the Week
Sunday	Youm alahad
Monday	Youm alitneen
Tuesday	Youm attalata
Wednesday	Youm alarbi3a
Thursday	Youm alkhamees
Friday	Youm aljom3a
Saturday	Youm assabit
Nouns
Street	Shari3
House	Bayt
University	Jam3a
Church	Kaneesa
Pen	Galam
Water	Moya
Food	Akil
Tea and Related Words
Tea	Shai
Coffee	Jabanah, gahwa
Sugar	Suker
Milk	Laban
1 spoonful, 2 spoonfuls	Mal3aga, mal3agteen
Adjectives, Adverbs
A little	Shwaya
A lot	Kateer
Far	Ba3eed
Near	Gareeb
Full (I’m full)	Shab3aan/shab3aana
Hot (I'm hot)	Sakhin/sakhna
Here, there	Hina, hinak
Just	Bas
Now	Al’an, hassa
Other Words
Cellphone	Telephone, mobile
Cellphone credit	Raseed
Cellphone charger	Shahin
Taxi that is a mini minibus	Amjad
Money	Guroosh
Change (as in coins)	Fakka
And	wa
But	Lakin
Bread	Aysh
Juice	3seer
Congratulations	Mabruk

Of course this list is nowhere near complete, nor do I pretend these are the 100 most useful words.

As you can see, I chose different tenses for the verbs; those are the tenses that I use the most with those particular verbs.  Also note that sometimes there are two forms of the verb given; the first is for males and the second for females.  The same goes for pronouns and some adjectives.

You will find that the days of the week correspond closely to numbers; months are similar--(shahar wahid, shahar itneen, etc.).

With these 100 words you can make so many combinations to get across what you are trying to say (even though your grammar may be atrocious).  Here are some examples, with the English first, Arabic second, sometimes with comments following:

• Just a minute--Degiga bas (minute just)
• Is there juice?--Fi 3seer farowla?  "Fi" is a great word; it means "there is, there are," but can also be used with a different intonation to mean "is there? are there?" It also means "in."
• There isn't--Ma fi.  "Ma" can also be used it before verbs to mean "don't/doesn't."
• I want tea (with milk), without sugar, and he wants coffee with one sugar--Ana dayra shai be leben, bedun sukr, wa hua dayr jebinah, sukr malaga.
• We are going to Street _____, after the university. How much?--Nihna masheen Shar3 _____, bad jam3a. Bikam?
• Where are you from? I am from America--Inti min wen? Ana min Amrika.
• Where are you going?--Masha wen?
• It's not far, it's near--"Ma baeed, gareeb."
• I want credit, 5 pounds Sudani; I have 10, do you have change?--Ana dayra raseet, khamsa Sudani; 3nde 3shara, 3ndak faka?

Now that I review this list I forgot a shocking number of very important words.  I guess that means I might have to write another post about this again.  If you speak Arabic or you're learning Arabic in Sudan and found this list skips some words you find useful, please leave a comment.

*I use the 3 here to symbolise the "ayin" sound.  You can hear how this sounds by listening to this clip.  If you can't pronounce it, replace with an 'a' sound as in 'cat.'

(For this series of posts, I would really like to get input from the Sudanese to be as accurate as possible. Please comment if I wrote something that is only partly true or could be misunderstood or is just obviously wrong. Thanks!)

Cellphones and Internet in Sudan

Note: This post is part of a series on what Khartoum is like.  It is intended for anyone coming to Sudan who wants to learn more and get advice on various topics before travelling here, and anyone else interested.

When I arrived, there were three things on my mind to accomplish immediately: get a sim card and credit, get internet, and exchange money.  I'll talk about the first two here.

Cell Phones

There are three major telecommunication companies in Sudan: Zain, Sudani, and MTN.  Supposedly they each have their pros and cons; Zain provides better rural coverage, Sudani is cheaper, and MTN has the cheapest international calls.  So as long as you won't be calling home every day or backpacking through the desert while camel-spotting, Sudani is probably the best option.

Cell phone service is quite simple: just buy a sim card and top-up credit and you're ready to go.  That is, unless you have an unlocked phone.  If your phone is locked, you can either buy a cheap phone in the market ($30) or pay someone to unlock your phone.

You can buy a sim card from a vendor in any market in Khartoum or at bus stations.  You can buy credit in most shops and at many single-stand vendors all over the city.  If you're not sure how to use top-up cards or can't understand the Arabic instructions, you can always ask the vendor to enter it for you the first few times.  Sometimes the credit comes as a scratch card, sometimes as a receipt, and sometimes the vendor will literally send you credit from his phone (which costs an extra 2 cents).

Note: cell phones are called telephones or mobiles here, so if you talk about cell phones, you will get blank stares.

Internet

The best internet is provided by Sudani.  I actually read that the Swedish ambassador said Sudan has the best internet in all of Africa.  Whether or not that's true, Sudani provides reliable, reasonably fast service at a very affordable rate.

You can buy two types of internet dongles from Sudani: one that takes unlimited data bundles and one that takes limited.  The limited dongle is enabled to have faster service, so if speed is important to you, this is a good option.  However, the unlimited dongle comes free with a 3-month unlimited bundle at about $30, an incredible bargain.

The internet is not fast enough to watch videos or listen to audio uninterrupted; you will probably have to wait three or four times as long for it to load.  However, I find that at certain times of the day (1 am to 1 pm), the internet is quicker, with the best time between 6 and 8 am, when download speed exceeds video-play speed, sometimes by two or three times.

(For this series of posts, I would really like to get input from the Sudanese to be as accurate as possible. Please comment if I wrote something that is only partly true or could be misunderstood or is just obviously wrong. Thanks!)

Women's Clothes in Sudan

(For this series of posts, I would really like to get input from the Sudanese to be as accurate as possible. Please comment if I wrote something that is only partly true or could be misunderstood or is just obviously wrong. Thanks!)

Note: This post is part of a series on what Khartoum is like.  It is intended for anyone coming to Sudan who wants to learn more and get advice on various topics before travelling here, and anyone else interested.

When I came to Sudan I was told to bring clothes that would cover much of my skin--long skirts, at-least-elbow-length high-necked shirts, etc.).  But despite this foreknowledge and having grown up donning a skirt whenever I exited our compound, I was surprised once I arrived here and saw for myself how stringent the (spoken or unspoken) rules were, especially for Sudanese women.  Most women in Khartoum (maybe 95%) cover themselves from ankle to wrist, and a majority (maybe 80%) cover their heads up to the chin and forehead.

Of course this was new to me, but I realized right away how beautiful Sudanese style is.  Women coordinate their colors in such a pretty way.  (I would have more pictures to show that, except that not all women allow their pictures online--hence Facebook accounts with models or cartoon characters as profile pictures.)

In general, I've noticed three main styles of dress in Khartoum: Sudanese, Saudi, and Western.  The traditional Sudanese garment is called a tobe--a long length of cloth wrapped around the waist and shoulders and draped over the head, similar to an Indian sari.  Tobes are worn with a skirt and shirt underneath and often a hijab pinned tight underneath, too.

In general, girls don't wear tobes or start wearing them upon marriage, although single women do wear them.  In Khartoum, for the most part, only older women wear them habitually while younger women wear them for special occasions, such as weddings.

My friend sports a lovely green tobe and matching yellow hijab. I edited this picture after it was first posted to keep my friend's face offline. 

In my opinion, tobes are really pretty but really impractical.  A woman wearing a tobe seems to be forever adjusting it, and they always seem to fall completely off when a woman gets off a bus.

3 sisters: Western, Saudi abaya, Sudanese tobe

Some Sudanese women wear the Saudi abaya--an enormously wide dress of generally thin, shiny material with embroidered patterns.  Under this, also, Sudanese women wear a shirt and skirt or trousers.  Perhaps this is because the abaya is made of such thin cloth.  Some women wear abayas for religious reasons (and sometimes this is accompanied by the face-covering niqab, stockings over feet, and handgloves--though handgloves are worn more often to protect from a tan than for religion).  Others wear the abaya because of its aesthetics.

Finally, most women in Khartoum dress in Western clothes, (that is, I assume the clothes are originally from the West, but does not mean they dress like Westerners) such as an ankle-length denim skirts, a long-sleeved shirt, another top layered over that, and a hijab crowning the outfit.  The more daring women wear trousers with long shirts/dresses, that come down to their knee, or at least to upper thigh.

For women thinking of visiting Sudan, you might feel like you have to buy an entirely new wardrobe.  It's pretty much true.  You can bend the unspoken rules, and as a foreigner, you can get away with a lot more than the Sudanese, but here are some recommendations on what to get before coming to Sudan.

Things I'm glad I brought/wish I had:

• long-sleeved shirts
• undershirts with high necks that you can wear under shirts with low necks
• tank tops/spaghetti straps that you can layer on top of other shirts
• those sleevey things that are basically a set of long sleeves to wear on top of a tank top--I'm not sure what they're called
• long skirts--especially denim or plain color to match with anything (check charity/thrift shops, or you can buy them in markets in Khartoum)
• at least one pair of jeans
• dress pants
• if you plan to wear hijab, come with one or two and buy most after you arrive as they are much cheaper here.
• (But also bring some normal clothes because you'll want to wear shorts and t-shirts while in your own house or jeans at an expat party.)

Guidelines:

• Shirts: elbow-length to wrist-length, no cleavage, long enough so there's never skin showing between your skirt and shirt, not skin-tight.
• Skirts: preferably ankle-length (and the so-long-that-I'm-sweeping-the-entire-pavement-around-me length is in style in Sudan) but at least longer than midcalf, not skin-tight. Slits are okay to mid-calf, but are preferably worn with leggings.
• Trousers: not skin-tight, with a longer shirt or dress that preferably covers your bottom.

All those guidelines will feel impossible to keep all the time, and you don't have to.  When you come to Sudan, you'll figure out what you're comfortable with and what level of restriction drives you bonkers.  I break the "rules" regularly and so do all the other volunteers, but they'res good guideline to start from.

And I'm sorry this got to be 5 pages long and as technical as a Pentagon plan-book to keep spiders from the President's morning coffee.

Khartoum: the Language

Sudan is only the second country I've been to where English isn't the official or dominant language.  The first would be Mozambique, which speaks Portuguese.  Not only is Portuguese a lot closer to English than Arabic is, it is also very similar to Spanish, which I've studied.  So living in an Arabic-speaking country is definitely a completely new experience!

Even before I arrived, I tried to learn the alphabet a little.  After 6 days in Sudan, I can only read 8 different letters, and I don't even know all their forms (Arabic letters have slight changes for beginning a word, middle of a word, and ending a word).  I've had more success learning Arabic numerals, which are easy to practice reading because they are on all license plates with the English equivalent beneath.  So I can read all 10 numbers now.

My vocabulary is probably about 20 words; I can do simple greetings, a few question words, and several numbers.  However, quite a few people here do know some English, so at this point, I can get by with little Arabic.  But it's the best feeling to manage to communicate my needs to someone who speaks no English, by pointing and using random Arabic words I think might be related.  I've had to do this a few times when my amjad driver doesn't know my exact destination, and neither do I.

There is a surprising amount of English here, though.  Many products have an English translation on the back, like my three water bottles here (though I'm displaying the Arabic sides).

At some point, I'd like to start taking formal Arabic lessons, but I'll wait until I know my schedule better and hear different perspectives about different colleges.