بالبلكون في سلة صغيرة فيها بطاطا وبصل.

بالبلكون is the colloquial contraction of بـ + ال + بلكون.

In Levantine, بـ often covers meanings like in / at / on, depending on context. So:

• بالبلكون = in/on the balcony
• في البلكون can also be heard, but بالبلكون sounds very natural in everyday speech

With places, Levantine often prefers بـ where English uses several different prepositions.

البلكون means the balcony, and it is a borrowed word, ultimately from European languages such as balcony.

A few useful points:

• بلكون = balcony
• البلكون = the balcony
• In speech, borrowed words are extremely common in Levantine

You may also hear slightly different pronunciations depending on region, but بلكون / balkōn is very common.

Here في means there is.

In Levantine, في has two common jobs:

1. Preposition: in
2. Existential particle: there is / there are

So in:

• بالبلكون في سلة صغيرة

the في is existential: there is a small basket on the balcony

This is very common in spoken Arabic.

Compare:

• في مي = There is water
• في حدا هون؟ = Is there anyone here?
• في السلة بطاطا = In the basket there are potatoes

So yes, the same word في can mean either in or there is, and context tells you which one it is.

Because in Arabic, present-tense sentences often do not use an explicit verb equivalent to English is / are.

So instead of saying something like:

• There is a small basket

Levantine can simply say:

• في سلة صغيرة

And instead of saying:

• The basket is small

Arabic can say:

• السلة صغيرة

No present-tense to be is needed.

This is one of the biggest differences from English.

Because in Arabic, adjectives normally come after the noun.

So:

• سلة صغيرة = a small basket
• literally: basket small

This is standard Arabic word order for noun + adjective.

Also, the adjective matches the noun in features like definiteness and gender:

• سلة = feminine singular, indefinite
• صغيرة = feminine singular, indefinite

If the noun were definite, the adjective would also be definite:

• السلة الصغيرة = the small basket

Because سلة is a feminine noun.

In Arabic, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe. Since سلة is feminine singular, the adjective also appears in feminine singular form:

• سلة صغيرة = a small basket

If the noun were masculine, you’d use the masculine adjective form instead:

• بيت صغير = a small house

A useful clue: many feminine nouns end in ـة, as سلة does.

فيها = in it or there is/are in it, depending on context.

It is made of:

• في = in
• ها = it (feminine), referring back to سلة

So:

• فيها بطاطا وبصل
• literally: in it [there are] potatoes and onions

Because سلة is feminine, the pronoun is ها.

If the thing referred to were masculine, you would use فيه:

• فيه مي = there is water in it / it has water in it

This is a very natural Arabic way to add information about an indefinite noun.

The phrase:

• في سلة صغيرة فيها بطاطا وبصل

literally feels like:

• there is a small basket; in it, potatoes and onions

In good English, that becomes:

• There’s a small basket with potatoes and onions in it
• or There’s a small basket that has potatoes and onions in it

In Levantine, after an indefinite noun like سلة صغيرة, you can often attach a descriptive clause directly without needing a relative word like that.

If the noun were definite, you’d more often expect اللي:

• السلة الصغيرة اللي فيها بطاطا وبصل
• the small basket that has potatoes and onions in it

So this structure is very normal.

Because the sentence is introducing them as general contents of the basket, not as specifically identified onions and potatoes already known to the listener.

So:

• بطاطا وبصل = potatoes and onions

If you said:

• البطاطا والبصل

that would sound more like the potatoes and the onions, referring to specific ones.

In Arabic, indefinite nouns are very common when listing what something contains.

بصل is often used as a collective / mass noun in everyday Arabic, much like English onion can sometimes behave generally in phrases like onion soup or there’s onion in it, though English usually says onions in this exact sentence.

So in Levantine:

• بصل can mean onion or onions depending on context

The same kind of thing happens with many food words.

So:

• فيها بطاطا وبصل naturally means it has potatoes and onions in it

Even though English prefers the plural onions, Arabic does not always need a distinct plural form here.

That is a regional vocabulary difference.

In Levantine, بطاطا is the usual everyday word for potatoes.

In Egyptian Arabic, بطاطس is much more common.

So for a Levantine sentence, بطاطا is exactly what you would expect.

Yes, the word order can often be changed, but the emphasis changes a little.

Your sentence:

• بالبلكون في سلة صغيرة فيها بطاطا وبصل

puts the location first, so it feels like:

• On the balcony, there’s a small basket...

If you say:

• في سلة صغيرة بالبلكون فيها بطاطا وبصل

that sounds more like:

• There’s a small basket on the balcony...

Both can work, but the original version highlights where the basket is right away.

Arabic is often more flexible with word order than English, especially in spoken language.

A natural Levantine-style pronunciation would be roughly:

• bil-balkōn fī salle zghīre fīha baṭāṭa w-baṣal

A few pronunciation notes:

• بالبلكون → bil-balkōn
• سلة is often heard as salle
• صغيرة in Levantine is often zghīre, not the more formal ṣaghīra
• وبصل = w-baṣal = and onions

So the sentence may look a bit more formal in writing than it sounds in everyday speech.

It is clearly colloquial / Levantine-style, though much of it is widely understandable.

What makes it feel colloquial:

• البلكون is a spoken borrowed word
• في used as there is is very common in dialect
• the overall sentence structure is conversational
• pronunciation in real life would be dialectal, especially صغيرة → زغيرة / zghīre

In Standard Arabic, you would normally phrase it differently.

So yes, many Arabic speakers would understand it, but it is not a formal MSA sentence.