فتشت على المفتاح بالشنطة، بس لقيته بالحمام.

In Levantine, فتّش على is a normal colloquial way to say look for / search for something.

In more formal Arabic, you would more often see فتّش عن. So this is a good example of how a verb can take a different preposition in dialect than in MSA.

A useful contrast:

• فتشت على المفتاح = I looked for the key
• فتشت الشنطة = I searched the bag / looked through the bag

So على helps show that المفتاح is the thing you were trying to find.

Because the verb already tells you the subject.

In Arabic, subject pronouns are often omitted when they are already clear from the verb form. Here:

• فتشت = I searched
• لقيت inside لقيته = I found

So أنا is not necessary. You could add أنا for emphasis, but normally you would leave it out.

Here it means in the bag or inside the bag.

It is made of:

• بـ = in / at / with / by, depending on context
• الشنطة = the bag

So:

• بالشنطة = in the bag

In this sentence, the context makes it clear that the bag is the place where the speaker was searching.

That is very normal in Levantine.

In spoken Levantine, بـ is often used where English would use in or at:

• بالبيت = at home / in the house
• بالحمام = in the bathroom
• بالشنطة = in the bag

You can also hear في in Levantine, and sometimes it sounds a bit more explicitly like inside. But بـ for location is extremely common and natural.

لقيته breaks down like this:

• لقيت = I found
• -ه = him / it

So لقيته means I found it.

In this sentence, it refers to المفتاح.

It can mean either him or it, depending on context.

Here it means it, because it refers back to المفتاح, and مفتاح is a masculine noun in Arabic.

So:

• المفتاح is masculine
• therefore the object suffix is -ه

If the thing found were feminine, the suffix would change. For example, with الشنطة you would say لقيتها = I found it, referring to a feminine noun.

Also, in Levantine pronunciation, written -ه at the end is often pronounced more like -o in this kind of sentence, so لقيته is commonly pronounced something like laʔēto.

Here, بس means but.

So it connects two contrasting ideas:

• I searched for the key in the bag
• but I found it in the bathroom

A useful note: in Levantine, بس can also mean only / just, so you have to use context to tell which meaning is intended. In this sentence, it clearly means but.

No. In the past tense, I forms like فتشت and لقيت do not show the speaker’s gender.

So both a man and a woman can say:

• فتشت
• لقيت

The sentence does not tell you the speaker’s gender.

A natural pronunciation would be something like:

fattešet ʿal-miftāḥ biš-šanṭa, bas laʔēto bil-ḥammām

A few helpful pronunciation notes:

• على is often reduced in speech, so it sounds like ʿa or ʿal
• بالشنطة is pronounced biš-šanṭa because the ل of ال assimilates to ش
• لقيته is often pronounced laʔēto
• بالحمام is pronounced bil-ḥammām

So the written form may look more formal than the actual spoken sound.

The word order is not completely fixed. The sentence as written is natural, but you can move things around a bit.

For example, speakers might also say:

• فتشت بالشنطة على المفتاح، بس لقيته بالحمام
• فتشت جوّا الشنطة على المفتاح، بس لقيته بالحمام

Using جوّا الشنطة makes the location extra clear: inside the bag.

So the original sentence is fine, but Levantine gives you some flexibility in where you place location phrases.

It is much more naturally read as Levantine.

Things that sound colloquial here include:

• بس for but
• لقى for find
• بـ used very naturally for location
• the overall phrasing with spoken-style verb choices

A more MSA-style version would be something like:

• فتّشتُ عن المفتاح في الحقيبة، لكن وجدته في الحمّام

So the sentence you were given is best understood as spoken Levantine, even though it is written in normal Arabic script.