هل عندك دقيقة؟
“هل عندك دقيقة؟” (халь ʿандак дакиика؟) — do you have a minute? in Arabic. Phrase, level B1. "Do you have a minute?" — Arabic makes no diminutive of the minute, and the request is no ruder for it. Daqiiqa, "a minute", is the same as in the recipe. In a live sentence: “هل عندك دقيقة؟ عندي سؤال واحد” — Do you have a minute? I have one question. Written with the characters ه, ل, ع, ن, د, ك, د, ق, ي, ق, ة.
In short
| Written in Arabic | هل عندك دقيقة؟ |
| Read in Latin letters | халь ʿандак дакиика؟ |
| Translation | do you have a minute? |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | B1 |
Why it looks that way
"Do you have a minute?" — Arabic makes no diminutive of the minute, and the request is no ruder for it. Daqiiqa, "a minute", is the same as in the recipe
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.
- هل عندك دقيقة؟ عندي سؤال واحدхаль ʿандак дакиика؟ ʿиндий суааль ваахидDo you have a minute? I have one question
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 “do you have a minute?” in Arabic?
«هل عندك دقيقة؟», read “халь ʿандак дакиика؟”. In a live sentence: “هل عندك دقيقة؟ عندي سؤال واحد” — Do you have a minute? I have one question. Phrase, level B1; written with the characters ه, ل, ع, ن, د, ك, د, ق, ي, ق, ة.
How is “هل عندك دقيقة؟” written in Latin letters?
халь ʿандак дакиика؟. 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?
"Do you have a minute?" — Arabic makes no diminutive of the minute, and the request is no ruder for it. Daqiiqa, "a minute", is the same as in the recipe. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.