الدرب ضيق.

narrow; tight

Breakdown of الدرب ضيق.

• درب: the trail; path

Questions & Answers about الدرب ضيق.

How would a Levantine speaker pronounce الدرب ضيق?

A common Levantine pronunciation is id-darb ḍayyeʔ or ed-darb ḍayyeʔ.

A few useful notes:

• الدرب is not usually said al-darb in normal speech.
• ضيق in many urban Levantine dialects ends with a glottal stop, so it sounds like ḍayyeʔ.
• In some dialects, you may hear ḍayyeq instead.

So the sentence sounds roughly like ed-darb day-ye', but with a heavy/emphatic d in ḍayyeʔ.

What exactly does الدرب mean here?

الدرب means the path, the way, the track, or sometimes the road/lane, depending on context.

Compared with some other words:

• طريق = road / way / route
• شارع = street
• درب often feels more like a path, track, or way through

So this sentence can suggest a path or passage being physically narrow, not necessarily a big street.

Why is there no word for is in the sentence?

Because Arabic often leaves out the verb to be in the present tense.

So:

• الدرب ضيق literally looks like the path narrow