3amoud lfi9ari عمود لفقري
Moroccan Darija · noun
“3amoud lfi9ari” (عمود لفقري) is a noun in Moroccan Darija meaning spinal column.
Meanings
- spinal column
Usage
3amoud lfi9ari is the medical term, borrowed from Standard Arabic. It is used mainly at the doctor's, with a physiotherapist, or to talk about a serious back problem: slipped disc, scoliosis, fracture. In everyday life, to complain about your back, people simply say dher, "the back": kayderni dhri, "my back hurts". The form without the article, 3amoud fi9ari, is common in online writing. It can sometimes be heard in the figurative sense of "pillar", but this sense remains rare and rather journalistic.
Example
الطبيب قال ليا عندي مشكل فالعمود الفقري
tbib gal lia 3andi mochkil f l3amoud lfi9ari
“The doctor told me I have a problem with my spine.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, it is written “3amoud lfi9ari”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.
Digits stand in for Arabic letters that have no Latin equivalent: 3 is ayn (ع), a voiced sound from deep in the throat with no English equivalent; 9 is qaf (ق), a k pronounced at the back of the throat.