Quantity Questions with قدّيش

قديش ʾaddēsh is the everyday Lebanese operator for an unknown quantity or degree: “how many?”, “how much?”, “how long?”, “how expensive?”, and more. It does not behave like the formal Arabic interrogative numeral كم. With things that can be counted, Lebanese قديش normally associates with a plural noun: قديش كتب؟ “how many books?”, قديش ولاد؟ “how many children?”

This difference matters because English how many gives no clue about Arabic noun form. Do not project the noun rules for a particular answer into the open question. Ask with a plural count associate; once someone answers “three,” “eleven,” or “twenty,” apply the noun morphology required by that actual number. The production baseline throughout is (informal: urban Beirut).

The core form-and-associate table

The table calls the noun or predicate an associate because قديش is not a numeral assigning one fixed noun form. It asks for the size of a set, amount, interval, price, or degree. That broad behavior also explains why قديش can be separated from a plural count noun by material such as عندك “you have.”

Count questions take plural associates

With countable people or things, use the ordinary plural noun. قديش كتب قريت؟ asks for the number of books; قديش عندك ولاد؟ asks for the size of someone’s set of children. Both are natural even though قديش and the noun are not adjacent in the second question.

Position follows information structure. Initial قديش announces the unknown quantity early. A visible item can be topicalized—هالكتب قديش عددن؟ “these books, how many are there?”—and echo questions can leave قديش late, as in هو دفع قديش؟ “he paid how much?” The stable beginner strategy for a neutral count question is initial قديش, with the plural noun either next to it or later in the clause.

The answer—not the question—chooses number morphology

The open question keeps a plural associate, but answers follow the normal Lebanese number system. One is postnominal, two can be a dual noun, three through ten take a plural, and eleven upward normally take a singular counted noun.

With three through ten, surviving construct shapes and noun plurals still matter: تلات سيارات, not تلاتة سيارة. Broader gender and plural agreement belongs under Nouns and Adjectives; the number pages cover the counted phrase itself.

Mass amounts and contextual units

A mass noun does not supply separate countable units, so it remains bare: قديش مي؟, قديش رز؟, قديش قهوة؟ when coffee means the substance. The answer can introduce a measure or container.

Context can turn a mass noun into servings. In a café, plural قهوات explicitly asks how many orders, while bare قهوة asks an amount or relies on context. If the count matters, the plural removes the ambiguity.

Prices: visible items and explicit حق

At a shop, قديش حقه؟ literally asks “how much is its price?” The suffix agrees with the item: حقه for a masculine singular, حقها for a feminine singular, and حقن for plural items. When the item is visible, bare هاد قديش؟ is also natural (informal).

In a setting where lira and dollars both occur, a number alone is incomplete. The money page develops currency labels and large sums.

Clock time and duration

قديش الساعة؟ requests the current clock reading. For a scheduled hour, عالقديش؟ asks “at what time?” Duration is a different quantity: قديش بدها وقت؟ asks how long something takes.

Degree and exclamation

Before an adjective or verb, قديش asks for degree rather than a count: قديش بعيد؟ “how far?”, قديش بتحبه؟ “how much do you like it?” An embedded clause can report the degree without asking a direct question.

The same structure becomes exclamative with expressive intonation: قديش حلو! does not request a measurement; it evaluates a high degree.

قدّيش versus كم, and regional recognition

كم is an interrogative numeral in (formal) Arabic. In the formal structure كَمْ كِتَابًا تُرِيدُ؟ “how many books do you want?”, it selects a singular counted noun and may carry a case-marked form in full pronunciation. Educated speakers may also use uncase-marked كم كتاب؟ in careful or mixed registers. That is a different construction from everyday Lebanese قديش كتب؟; do not create a hybrid by giving قديش the singular syntax of كم.

Across the Levant, قديش is widespread, but pronunciation and competing forms track region and speaker. Shorter قديه ʾaddē is common (regional: Lebanon). Urban Syrian and Palestinian speakers also use cognate قديش forms; Jordanian, Palestinian, rural, and community varieties may realize the initial historical ق differently or prefer another question form in some contexts. Keep Beirut ʾaddēsh as the active model and treat other outcomes as labeled recognition forms rather than a blended “Levantine” pronunciation.

A café dialogue: approximate request, exact count, and total

Common Mistakes

Giving قديش the singular syntax of كم

Keeping the question's plural after a teen answer

Ignoring the three-to-ten counted phrase

Adding a formal case form after قديش

Treating every قديش clause as a price question

Key Takeaways

Lebanese قديش asks for an unknown quantity or degree; it is not the interrogative numeral كم. Use plural count associates—قديش كتب؟، قديش عندك ولاد؟—and bare mass associates such as قديش مي؟. Let the answer choose singular, dual, plural, construct, or gender-sensitive number morphology. The same operator asks prices, time, duration, and degree, while expressive intonation turns it into an exclamation. Keep formal/careful كم + singular separate from everyday Beirut قديش + plural.