هاي القصة بتضحك، والقصة يلي قريتها مبارح ما بتضحك.

هاي means this in Levantine Arabic.

So هاي القصة = this story.

A learner may expect Standard Arabic هذه القصة, but in everyday Levantine, هاي is very common for feminine nouns like قصة.

The noun قصة is grammatically feminine. One clue is the ـة ending, which often marks feminine nouns.

Because it is feminine, the verb in the present tense shows feminine agreement:

• القصة بتضحك
• literally: the story makes [someone] laugh / is funny

That بتـ at the start of the verb matches a she/it feminine singular subject.

بتضحك comes from the verb ضحك related to laughing.

In this sentence, بتضحك means something like:

• is funny
• makes you laugh
• makes people laugh

So هاي القصة بتضحك is not saying the story itself is laughing. It means the story is funny.

This is a very natural way in Arabic to describe something as amusing.

In Levantine Arabic, a very common way to negate present-tense verbs is:

• ما + verb

So:

• بتضحك = it’s funny / it makes you laugh
• ما بتضحك = it isn’t funny / it doesn’t make you laugh

This is standard everyday Levantine negation.

يلي means that, which, or that/which ... in a relative-clause sense.

In القصة يلي قريتها مبارح it means:

• the story that I read yesterday

It connects القصة with the extra information قريتها مبارح.

You can think of it as the Levantine everyday equivalent of a relative word like that or which in English.

Because the verb includes an object pronoun.

قريتها breaks down like this:

• قريت = I read
• ـها = it / her

So قريتها = I read it

Since القصة is feminine, the attached pronoun is ـها, referring back to the story.

So:

• القصة يلي قريتها مبارح
• literally: the story that I-read-it yesterday
• natural English: the story that I read yesterday

English often leaves out the object pronoun in this kind of clause, but Arabic keeps it.

This is very normal in Arabic relative clauses.

In English, we say:

• the story that I read yesterday

But in Levantine Arabic, it is very common to say the equivalent of:

• the story that I read it yesterday

That extra object pronoun is called a resumptive pronoun, and it is a normal feature of Arabic.

So even though it sounds unusual from an English perspective, القصة يلي قريتها مبارح is exactly what you would expect in natural Levantine.

مبارح means yesterday.

It comes after the verb phrase:

• قريتها مبارح = I read it yesterday

That placement is very natural in Levantine. Arabic is fairly flexible with word order, but this order is common and straightforward.

The speaker could have used a pronoun in some contexts, but repeating القصة makes the contrast very clear:

• هاي القصة بتضحك
• والقصة يلي قريتها مبارح ما بتضحك

This creates a nice comparison:

• this story is funny
• but the story I read yesterday isn’t funny

Repeating the noun is natural when you want emphasis or a clear contrast between two different stories.

و usually means and.

Here it links the two clauses:

• هاي القصة بتضحك، والقصة يلي قريتها مبارح ما بتضحك

In English, depending on context, you might translate it as:

• and
• while
• sometimes even but

Even though the Arabic uses و, the overall meaning can feel contrastive because the second clause is negative.

A simple transliteration would be:

haay il-ʔissa btiḍḥak, wil-ʔissa yalli areyta مبارح ma btiḍḥak

A smoother learner-friendly version:

haay il-issa btidhak, wil-issa yalli areyta mbaareh ma btidhak

Pronunciation notes:

• هاي = haay
• القصة in Levantine is often pronounced roughly il-issa or el-issa
• يلي = yalli or sometimes illi
• مبارح = mbaareh
• بتضحك has the emphatic ض, which is harder than a plain d

It can do both.

In Levantine, the present/imperfect form often expresses:

• something happening now
• a habitual action
• a general characteristic

So هاي القصة بتضحك can mean:

• this story is funny
• this story makes people laugh
• this story tends to make you laugh

It is not limited to a single action happening right this second.

Yes. Levantine has some variation by region and speaker. For example:

• هاي القصة بتجنّن = this story is amazing
• هاي القصة مضحكة would be more formal or bookish for this story is funny
• القصة اللي قريتها مبارح instead of القصة يلي قريتها مبارح is also common in some varieties

But the original sentence sounds very natural in everyday Levantine:

• هاي القصة بتضحك، والقصة يلي قريتها مبارح ما بتضحك.