شو معنى كلمة "كتار" بالعامية؟ اهلا يا جماعة I was wondering about the meaning of "ktar" in Levantine Arabic. I've heard people use it quite often (especially Lebanese and Syrians, I don't know if it'

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Tomás Abascal

شو معنى كلمة "كتار" بالعامية؟ اهلا يا جماعة I was wondering about the meaning of "ktar" in Levantine Arabic. I've heard people use it quite often (especially Lebanese and Syrians, I don't know if it's also the case in Palestine and Jordan). I can more or less guess the meaning in context, but I thought it would be good to ask here to be sure. I had the impression it was either a shortened colloquial form of "akthar" (اكثر) or an alternative (or plural) form for ktir (كثير) Can you help me with that? Cheers.

Jul 27, 2018 5:35 PM

Answers · 8

Yeah , it does mean الكثير (al'kathir) كثير (kathir) in the Levantine Arabic

July 27, 2018

Hello Tomas! ¨ktar¨ comes originally from كثر ¨kuthr¨or ¨kuthur¨ in MSA. As you mentioned, it is an alternative form of plural for ¨ktir¨ كتير , but ¨ktar¨ only comes after the noun and it can serve as an adjective. Examples: shebab ktar شباب كتار the same goes for ¨big¨ كبير ¨kbir¨ and ¨kbar¨

July 28, 2018

Also something to note, I believe that in the Levantine dialect, كتار can be used to mean "many (people)". Sometimes adjectives like this replace the ي with an ا to refer to a plural noun of "living objects" such as people or sometimes animals. I.e. كبار - "plural old people" صغار - "plural young people"

February 19, 2019

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