How to say "pencil" in Arabic
New wordMeaningpencil
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
qalam raṣāṣקלם רצאץ
قلم رصاص
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
iparonإِيپَارُون
How the two words are related
No Hebrew relative — learn it fresh.
Arabic root
ق-ل-مLiterally 'a pen of lead': raṣāṣ is the metal lead. Hebrew had the same idea — עיפרון is built on עופרת, 'lead' — but with an unrelated root, so the two pencils are twins in image only, not in etymology.
Learn it
On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Levantine · Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria
City speech turns the qāf into a glottal stop: ʾalam raṣāṣ.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
Cairo says ʾalam ruṣāṣ, with u in the second word.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
In Darija the bare qlam is the pencil; a pen is a stīlo.
In a phrase
Write in pencil.
Plural
only the head noun takes the plural: aqlām (broken plural afʿāl).