هي ساكنة قريب من الجامعة.

هي means she.

In Egyptian Arabic, it is usually pronounced hiyya. It is the subject of the sentence, so the sentence is talking about a female person.

In Arabic, the present-tense verb to be is usually not said.

So English She is living near the university becomes literally something like:

• she + living/residing + near + from + the university

This is completely normal in Arabic. The idea of is is understood automatically from the structure.

ساكنة comes from the verb سكن, which is about living somewhere, residing, or dwelling somewhere.

In Egyptian Arabic, ساكن / ساكنة often means:

• living
• residing
• staying

So here ساكنة means that she lives there or resides there, not just that she is physically sitting or standing there at the moment.

Because the subject is feminine: هي = she.

Arabic usually makes adjectives and participles agree with the person they describe:

• هو ساكن = he is living
• هي ساكنة = she is living

The ة marks the feminine form.

In careful reading, you might think of it as saakina, but in Egyptian Arabic it is usually pronounced more like sākna.

That is very common in Egyptian speech: short vowels in the middle often get reduced or dropped.

So a natural Egyptian pronunciation is:

• هي ساكنة → hiyya sākna

This is a very common question.

Here قريب من works more like near as an adverbial expression, not simply like a regular adjective agreeing with she.

So in everyday Arabic, especially in colloquial usage, قريب من is often kept in this basic form:

• قريب من الجامعة = near the university

Even if the subject is feminine, speakers often still say قريب من.

If قريب/قريبة is directly describing a feminine noun, agreement is more obvious. But in this kind of sentence, قريب من is very commonly used as a fixed expression meaning near.

من literally usually means from, but after قريب it gives the meaning near to / near.

So:

• قريب من الجامعة = near the university

This is just the normal Arabic pattern. English says near the university or near to the university, while Arabic uses قريب من.

جامعة means university.

The ال at the beginning is the Arabic word for the, so:

• جامعة = a university / university
• الجامعة = the university

So the phrase means near the university.

In Egyptian Arabic, ج is usually pronounced like a hard g.

So الجامعة is pronounced roughly:

• el-gāmʿa

A few useful notes:

• ال is usually el- or il- in Egyptian pronunciation
• ج sounds like g
• the word is often shortened in natural speech compared with careful standard pronunciation

This is a nominal sentence, meaning it does not start with a verb.

Its structure is:

• هي = subject
• ساكنة = predicate
• قريب من الجامعة = phrase telling location

So the pattern is basically:

• she + living/residing + near the university

This is a very common and natural way to make simple present-tense statements in Arabic.

Sometimes in conversation, if the person is already understood from context, Arabic can leave things unsaid more easily than English.

But as a full standalone sentence, هي ساكنة قريب من الجامعة is clear and complete.

So for learners, it is best to keep هي unless the context makes the subject obvious.

A natural pronunciation would be roughly:

hiyya sākna 'arīb men el-gāmʿa

A few pronunciation notes:

• هي → hiyya
• ساكنة → sākna
• ق in Egyptian is often a glottal stop, so قريب can sound like 'arīb
• الجامعة → el-gāmʿa

So even though the spelling is the same, the spoken Egyptian form sounds quite different from careful Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation.