الركام على البلاط.

The debris is on the tiles.

Breakdown of الركام على البلاط.

• على: on
• البلاط: the tiles
• الركام: the debris

Questions & Answers about الركام على البلاط.

How would I pronounce this in Egyptian Arabic?

A natural Egyptian-style pronunciation would be er-rokām ʿal-balāṭ or, a little more carefully, er-rokām ʿala el-balāṭ.

A few helpful details:

• الركام is pronounced er-rokām, not el-rokām, because ر is a sun letter. That means the l sound in ال assimilates, and the r gets doubled in pronunciation.
• على is often reduced in fast speech to ʿal- before the next word.
• البلاط is pronounced el-balāṭ, because ب is a moon letter, so the l in ال stays pronounced.

Why is there no word for is in the sentence?

Because Arabic normally leaves out the present-tense verb to be.

So a sentence like this is completely normal:

• الركام على البلاط

It literally looks like:

• the rubble on the tile floor

But in normal English terms, it means:

• the rubble is on the tile floor

This is very common in both Egyptian Arabic and Standard Arabic.

What does each word do in the sentence?