Chapter 8: Relatives

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The relative pronoun is another simple matter in Lebanese. Unlike Arabic where there are as many forms of the relative pronoun as there are personal pronouns, in Lebanese one size fits all we use yalle, or sometimes drop the y and say 'alle.

The car (that) I drive: l-seyyara yalle bsoo'a (note that the verb still contains the suffix-pronoun referring to the car and the sentence is literally "the car that I drive it") The man who left: el-rajol alle tarak. The women (that) you told me about: el-neswen yalle eltelle 3annon.

When the subject of your phrase is something that you need to define through a relative clause, in English you end up with sentences like these:

What I bought was stolen.
He who falls, gets up.
The one that got away came back.

Notice that whole sentences are the subject of the main sentence. The same occurs in Lebanese, but instead of using different ways to make the phrase acceptable we just stick yalle as the first word:

What I bought was stolen: Yalle shtarayto nsara'
He who falls, gets up: Yalle byoo'a3 byerja3 bi'oom.
The one that got away came back: Yalle zamat reje3.

Chapter 9: Adjectives