Learn Hardcore Arabic (Levantine): هي قالتلي انها عم تفكر تشتري نظارات جديدة، بس لسه ما جربتها. - She told me that she is thinking of buying new glasses, but she has not tried them on yet.

تفكر on its own can mean she thinks / she is thinking, depending on context
عم تفكر makes it clearer that the meaning is she is thinking / she’s in the process of thinking

So إنها عم تفكر is roughly:

that she is thinking
or more naturally here: that she’s thinking about

This is a very common Levantine feature.

Why is it تفكر تشتري? Why is there no separate word for to buy?

After verbs like يفكر / تفكر (to think), Levantine can put another verb directly after it to express something like thinking of doing or thinking about doing.

So:

عم تفكر تشتري = she is thinking of buying
literally: she is thinking [she] buys / buy

Arabic does not need an extra word exactly like English to here.

This pattern is very normal in spoken Arabic:

بدي روح = I want to go
عم حاول افهم = I’m trying to understand
عم تفكر تشتري = she’s thinking of buying

What does بس mean in this sentence?

Here بس means but.

So:

..., بس لسه ما جربتها
..., but she still hasn’t tried it/them yet

Important: بس can also mean only / just in other contexts, so learners often meet both meanings.

In this sentence, though, it is clearly the contrastive but.

How does لسه ما جربتها mean she still hasn’t tried it/them yet?

This is a very common Levantine pattern:

لسه = still / yet
ما = negation
past tense verb = often used where English uses hasn’t done

So:

لسه ما جربتها literally looks like still not tried-it
natural English: she still hasn’t tried it yet

This is one of those places where English and Arabic package time differently. English likes the present perfect (hasn’t tried), while Levantine often uses ما + past verb.

Why isn’t there a separate word for on in try them on?

Because جرّب in Arabic often already covers the meaning of try or try on, depending on the object.

So when the object is something wearable like glasses, clothes, shoes, etc., جرّب can naturally mean:

try
try on

So:

جربتها here means tried it / tried them on

Arabic does not always need a separate equivalent of English on in this kind of sentence.

Why does the sentence use ها in جربتها if نظارات is plural?

This is a very natural question.

The short answer is that non-human nouns in Arabic are often treated a bit differently from human plurals, and something like نظارات can also be understood as a single set / pair.

So even though نظارات looks plural, referring back to it with a feminine singular pronoun like ها can sound natural in colloquial usage.

That is especially understandable with something like glasses, because in English too we say glasses even though it is really one item worn as a pair.

So جربتها can be understood as:

she hasn’t tried it yet if you think of the glasses as one set
or idiomatically she hasn’t tried them on yet

Does نظارات mean more than one pair of glasses, or can it mean just one pair?

It can absolutely refer to one pair of glasses.

That is one reason the later pronoun may feel singular in Arabic. Just as English says glasses for one wearable item, Arabic can use نظارات for a single pair.

So in this sentence, نظارات جديدة most naturally means:

new glasses
i.e. a new pair of glasses

not necessarily multiple separate pairs.

How do we know جربتها means she tried it and not I tried it? The spelling looks like it could be both.

Because Arabic spelling often leaves out short vowels, the written form جربتها can indeed look ambiguous to a learner.

Context tells you how to read it.

Here the sentence is about هي throughout:

هي قالتلي
إنها عم تفكر
لسه ما جربتها

So the natural reading is she hasn’t tried it.

In actual speech, the pronunciation would make it clearer, and the surrounding grammar removes the ambiguity. This is very common in Arabic writing: the script often relies on context more than English does.