غائم
“غائم” (гааʾим) — cloudy in Arabic. Adverb, level B1. The hamza sits in the middle: "ghaa-ʾim", a cut after the long aa. In a live sentence: “السماء غائمة والجو خانق اليوم” — The sky is cloudy, and the air is stuffy today. Written with the characters غ, ا, ئ, م. A word from the everyday Arabic course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Arabic | غائم |
| Read in Latin letters | гааʾим |
| Translation | cloudy |
| Part of speech | adverb |
| Level | B1 |
How to pronounce it
The hamza sits in the middle: "ghaa-ʾim", a cut after the long aa
Why it looks that way
From ghaym, "clouds": ghaaʾim is cloudy. The sky is feminine: as-samaa ghaaʾima. About dull weather Arabic speaks not with an adverb but of the sky itself
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.
- السماء غائمة والجو خانق اليومас-самаа гааʾима ва-ль-джавв ханик аль-йаумThe sky is cloudy, and the air is stuffy today
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 “cloudy” in Arabic?
«غائم», read “гааʾим”. The hamza sits in the middle: "ghaa-ʾim", a cut after the long aa. In a live sentence: “السماء غائمة والجو خانق اليوم” — The sky is cloudy, and the air is stuffy today. Adverb, level B1; written with the characters غ, ا, ئ, م.
How is “غائم” written in Latin letters?
гааʾим. 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?
From ghaym, "clouds": ghaaʾim is cloudy. The sky is feminine: as-samaa ghaaʾima. About dull weather Arabic speaks not with an adverb but of the sky itself. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.