Before I went on to hike the Jordan Trail, I had never been to the Middle East, never thoroughly studied local culture, let alone learned some Arabic words. I got in contact with Swedish photographer Leif Söderlund via Instagram (the good way), who was kind enough to share his list of words he uses on the trail and added them to the list I got from the Jordan Trail website. I added words I used on the trail a lot.
I have updated this post in 2021
So here are some essential Arabic words for hiking in Jordan:
| Hello/peace be upon you | es-sa-LAA-moo aah-LAY-koom (mostly abbreviated to es-sa-LAA-moo) |
| Hello/peace be upon you (reply) | wa aah-LAY-koom es-sa-LAM |
| Hi | MAR-HA-ba |
| My name is _____ | AH-na IS-mee _____ |
| Thank you | SHUK-ran |
| Yes | NA-am |
| No | leh |
| Where is __________? | Wayn ___________? |
| Goodbye | MA-ah es-sa-LAA-meh |
| Good morning | Sabah El Jamir |
| What is your name? | Shu ismak? |
| Nice to meet you | Ta sharafna |
| Good | Jayyid |
| Come on, hurry up | Yalla yalla |
| Excuse me | Low Sahmet |
| Sorry | Ana asif |
| No thank you | La shukran lek (probably the expression I used the most as I was kindly refusing tea (Bedouin) or merchandise (at Little Petra and Petra)). |
| I | Ana |
| You | Anta |
| Water | Mai (pronounced ‘moi’) |
| Hiking | MA-sji (there is another word, Netmsha, but I never used it) |
| Beautiful | Jamil (pronounced ‘djamil’) |
| A little (or: slow) | Shwei shwei |
| I love … | Baheba … |
| Rain | Mattar |
| Sunset | El Ghoroob |
| Danger/dangerous | Khatar (pronounce ‘Ghatar’) |
| Tomorrow | Bokra |
| Night (mainly used to tell where I was going to sleep) | Lail |
| Today | LI-oom (El-Youm) |
| Yesterday | Barre |
Please let me know if you have other Arabic words to add.
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