t9il ثقيل
Tunisian Derja · adjective
“t9il” (ثقيل) is an adjective in Tunisian Derja meaning heavy, weighty.
Meanings
- heavy, weighty
- tiresome, annoying (person)
- slow, sluggish
Usage
T9il first describes what weighs a lot: a bag, a piece of furniture, a meal that is hard to digest. Applied to a person, it takes the figurative sense of "heavy", "tiresome": someone who is pushy, tactless, or whose jokes fall flat. One also says "dammou t9il" for an unpleasant person, the opposite of "dammou khfif". The word can also describe someone slow. The feminine is t9ila, the plural t9al. The common opposite is khfif, "light".
Example
الشكارة هاذي ثقيلة برشا، عاوني.
e chkara hedhi t9ila barcha, 3aweni.
“This bag is very heavy, help me.”
How to write it in Latin letters
In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “t9il” but also “thkil”, “th9il”, “tqil” and “t9ila”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.
Digits stand in for Arabic letters that have no Latin equivalent: 9 is qaf (ق), a k pronounced at the back of the throat.