لا شكر على واجب
“لا شكر على واجب” (ля шукр ʿаля ваджиб) — you're welcome in Arabic. Phrase, level A0. Word for word "no thanks for a duty": the person did what they had to anyway. To shukran an Arab more often answers afwan — the very "excuse me" word doubling as the polite brush-off. In a live sentence: “شكرا. — لا شكر على واجب” — Thank you. — You are welcome. Written with the characters ل, ا, ش, ك, ر, ع, ل, ى, و, ا, ج, ب.
In short
| Written in Arabic | لا شكر على واجب |
| Read in Latin letters | ля шукр ʿаля ваджиб |
| Translation | you're welcome |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A0 |
Why it looks that way
Word for word "no thanks for a duty": the person did what they had to anyway. To shukran an Arab more often answers afwan — the very "excuse me" word doubling as the polite brush-off
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.
- شكرا. — لا شكر على واجبшукран. — ля шукр ʿаля ваджибThank you. — You are welcome
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 “you're welcome” in Arabic?
«لا شكر على واجب», read “ля шукр ʿаля ваджиб”. In a live sentence: “شكرا. — لا شكر على واجب” — Thank you. — You are welcome. Phrase, level A0; written with the characters ل, ا, ش, ك, ر, ع, ل, ى, و, ا, ج, ب.
How is “لا شكر على واجب” written in Latin letters?
ля шукр ʿаля ваджиб. 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?
Word for word "no thanks for a duty": the person did what they had to anyway. To shukran an Arab more often answers afwan — the very "excuse me" word doubling as the polite brush-off. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.