اليوم برد كتير، فبدي شاي.

One common Levantine pronunciation is:

il-yoom berd kteer, fa-biddi shay

A rough word-by-word guide:

• اليوم = il-yoom
• برد = berd
• كتير = kteer
• فبدي = fa-biddi
• شاي = shay

A few sounds vary by region, so you may also hear things like bard instead of berd, or baddi instead of biddi.

Because in Arabic, especially in the present tense, the verb to be is usually omitted.

So اليوم برد كتير is literally something like:

today cold a lot

but naturally it means:

Today it’s very cold.

This is completely normal in both spoken Arabic and Standard Arabic in present-time sentences.

Not exactly.

In this sentence, برد refers to cold/weather cold/coldness. It is very common in Levantine for talking about the weather.

• اليوم برد = It’s cold today
• في برد = There’s cold / It’s cold

By contrast, بارد is more like the adjective cold used to describe something:

• المي بارد = The water is cold
• الأكل بارد = The food is cold

So in weather talk, برد is especially common.

Here كتير means very.

So:

• برد كتير = very cold

This is a very common Levantine use of كتير. Depending on context, it can also mean a lot or many/much.

Examples:

• بحبك كتير = I love you very much
• عندي شغل كتير = I have a lot of work

So كتير is a flexible high-frequency word.

The فـ means so, then, or therefore.

It connects the two ideas:

• اليوم برد كتير = Today it’s very cold
• فبدي شاي = so I want tea

In Arabic, short connector words like فـ often attach directly to the following word in writing. So فبدي is really:

فـ + بدي

بدي means I want in Levantine Arabic.

It is one of the most common ways to express wanting in everyday speech.

So:

• بدي شاي = I want tea

Related forms include:

• بدك = you want
• بده = he wants
• بدها = she wants
• بدنا = we want

This is dialectal Levantine. In Modern Standard Arabic, you would more likely see أريد for I want.

Because بدي already tells you the subject is I.

So:

• بدي شاي = I want tea

You can add أنا if you want emphasis or contrast:

• أنا بدي شاي = I want tea
• maybe with the sense of I want tea, not something else or I’m the one who wants tea

In normal conversation, leaving out أنا is very common.

Arabic does not have an indefinite article like English a/an.

So شاي can mean:

• tea
• some tea
• a tea

The exact meaning depends on context.

In this sentence, بدي شاي naturally means I want tea or I want some tea.

If you want to be more specific, you could say things like:

• بدي كاسة شاي = I want a cup of tea

Yes, you can.

Both are natural:

• اليوم برد كتير
• برد كتير اليوم

The difference is mostly about emphasis and flow.

• اليوم برد كتير starts with today, so it sets the time right away.
• برد كتير اليوم starts with it’s very cold, then adds today.

Beginning with اليوم is a very common way to frame the sentence.

This sentence is clearly Levantine Arabic.

The biggest clues are:

• كتير instead of جدًا
• بدي instead of أريد
• overall everyday spoken style

A more Standard Arabic version might be:

الجو اليوم بارد جدًا، لذلك أريد شايًا.

or more simply:

اليوم الجو بارد جدًا، لذلك أريد شايًا.

So the original sentence is natural spoken Levantine, not formal Standard Arabic.

Not exactly.

• فبدي شاي = so I want tea
• فبدي أشرب شاي = so I want to drink tea

The first one is shorter and more natural in many everyday situations. If someone says بدي شاي, it is already understood that they want to drink it.

The longer version is more explicit, but not always necessary.