العروة تحت الزرار.

A natural Egyptian pronunciation is:

el-ʿorwa taḥt ez-zarār

A few notes:

• ع in العروة is the Arabic letter ʿayn. It does not have a true English equivalent.
• تحت is taḥt, with ḥ representing the deep ح sound.
• الزرار is pronounced ez-zarār, not el-zarār, because ز is a sun letter, so the l of الـ assimilates.

Because Arabic normally leaves out is/am/are in the present tense.

So:

• العروة تحت الزرار = The buttonhole is under the button

This is completely normal in both Egyptian Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. If you translate word-for-word, it is more like:

• the-buttonhole under the-button

العروة means the buttonhole or sometimes the loop/opening that a button goes through.

In clothing vocabulary, it is the part of the shirt, jacket, etc. where the button fits.

Also, the final ة in العروة is a taa marbuuTa. In this sentence, it is pronounced like -a, not -t:

• ʿorwa, not ʿorwat

In Egyptian Arabic, زرار is the everyday word for button.

So:

• الزرار = the button

This word is especially common in spoken Egyptian Arabic. A learner may notice that this is not the most textbook-like Modern Standard Arabic form, which is one clue that the sentence is dialectal.

Because both are definite:

• العروة = the buttonhole
• الزرار = the button

Arabic uses الـ to mark definiteness, just like English uses the.

So the sentence is talking about a specific buttonhole and a specific button, not just any buttonhole or any button.

Because ز is a sun letter.

With sun letters, the l sound in الـ disappears in pronunciation and the next consonant is doubled.

So:

• written: الزرار
• pronounced: ez-zarār

You still write الـ, but you do not pronounce the l here.

تحت means under or below.

It is a preposition, and it introduces the location of something.

So in this sentence:

• العروة = the thing being talked about
• تحت الزرار = where it is

Very literally:

• The buttonhole — under the button

Yes. This is a very normal Arabic sentence pattern.

It follows this structure:

• noun + location phrase

So:

• العروة = the topic
• تحت الزرار = where it is

This is the natural way to say it in a plain statement. You could change the order for emphasis in some contexts, but this version is the basic, neutral one.

It is best understood as Egyptian Arabic.

Why?

• The word زرار is a very common Egyptian colloquial word.
• The overall structure is also perfectly natural in speech.

That said, the grammar of the sentence is simple enough that a learner of Standard Arabic can still understand the pattern easily.

Not very visibly here, but yes, the nouns do have gender.

• العروة is feminine
• الزرار is usually masculine

You can often tell العروة is feminine because it ends in ة.

In this particular sentence, there is no adjective or present-tense verb showing agreement, so the gender does not change the form of the sentence. But it would matter in other sentences, for example if you added an adjective.