ماذا قلتم؟
“ماذا قلتم؟” (мааза култум؟) — what did you say? in Arabic. Phrase, level A2. Polite to one person or a group — qultum, "you said". To a friend one says maadha qulta. Shorter and politer still is a plain afwan? — "sorry?" In a live sentence: “عفوا، ماذا قلتم؟” — Excuse me, what did you say? Written with the characters م, ا, ذ, ا, ق, ل, ت, م. A word from the everyday Arabic course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Arabic | ماذا قلتم؟ |
| Read in Latin letters | мааза култум؟ |
| Translation | what did you say? |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
Polite to one person or a group — qultum, "you said". To a friend one says maadha qulta. Shorter and politer still is a plain afwan? — "sorry?"
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.
- عفوا، ماذا قلتم؟афван, мааза култум؟Excuse me, what did you say?
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 “what did you say?” in Arabic?
«ماذا قلتم؟», read “мааза култум؟”. In a live sentence: “عفوا، ماذا قلتم؟” — Excuse me, what did you say? Phrase, level A2; written with the characters م, ا, ذ, ا, ق, ل, ت, م.
How is “ماذا قلتم؟” written in Latin letters?
мааза култум؟. 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?
Polite to one person or a group — qultum, "you said". To a friend one says maadha qulta. Shorter and politer still is a plain afwan? — "sorry?" A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.