أبيض
“أبيض” (абьяд) — white in Arabic. Adjective, level A1. White in Arab culture is the colour of purity and hospitality: guests are met in white, tables are spread with it. The form of the adjectives is as slender as of the words. In a live sentence: “قميص أبيض جديد” — A new white shirt. Written with the characters أ, ب, ي, ض. A word from the everyday Arabic course, level A1.
In short
| Written in Arabic | أبيض |
| Read in Latin letters | абьяд |
| Translation | white |
| Part of speech | adjective |
| Level | A1 |
Why it looks that way
White in Arab culture is the colour of purity and hospitality: guests are met in white, tables are spread with it. The form of the adjectives is as slender as of the words
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- قميص أبيض جديدкамиис абьяд джадидA new white shirt
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “white” in Arabic?
«أبيض», read “абьяд”. In a live sentence: “قميص أبيض جديد” — A new white shirt. Adjective, level A1; written with the characters أ, ب, ي, ض.
How is “أبيض” written in Latin letters?
абьяд. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
White in Arab culture is the colour of purity and hospitality: guests are met in white, tables are spread with it. The form of the adjectives is as slender as of the words. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.