وقف شوي
All Saudiwaggif shwayy
Stop for a second.
Waggif shwayy - stop for a second, hold on a moment - is what you say to a driver, and shwayy is the little word that softens almost any instruction in Saudi Arabic.
Hear it and read the entrySaudi phrasebook
Taxi and directionsin Saudi Arabic.
Stop here, wait a moment, slowly, where is it - getting where you are going.
The taxi is where most people in Saudi Arabia use Arabic for the first time - a driver, a route, a place with no exact address, and a decision to make in the next ten seconds. The phrases you need are few and short: stop here, wait a moment, a little further, slowly, where is the entrance.
They are also the phrases where the dialect shows most. Waggif with a hard g, shwayy softening every instruction, yalla doing three jobs at once. Say the textbook versions and the driver will understand you; say these and the driver will answer you in Arabic, which is the point.
Every entry has the phrase, the driver's usual reply, the mistake to avoid, and a Saudi teacher's recording of the phrase and its examples.
1 entry
The phrases
Every recording in the phrasebook is from the audio library of the Essential Saudi Dialect Book.
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