تاخرت عالشغل اليوم لانه كان في زحمة بالطريق.

It means I was late or I got delayed.

In this sentence, it is:

• past tense
• first person singular
• from the verb تأخر = to be late / to get delayed

So تاخرت tells you the speaker is talking about themself in the past: I was late.

That is very common in informal Levantine writing.

In casual texting or dialect writing, people often:

• drop the hamza
• ignore some formal spelling details
• write closer to how they speak

So تاخرت is a casual spelling of تأخرت.

A more careful or formal spelling might keep the hamza, but in everyday dialect writing, تاخرت is completely normal.

Because Arabic usually does not need the subject pronoun if the verb already shows who is doing the action.

In تاخرت, the ending already tells you the subject is I.

So:

• أنا تاخرت = I was late
• تاخرت = also I was late

Adding أنا would usually give extra emphasis, such as:

• أنا تاخرت، مو هو = I was late, not him

عالشغل means to work or to the workplace in this sentence.

It is made of:

• عـ = short colloquial form of على
• الشغل = the work / work

So literally it looks like on the work, but that is not how it functions in English. In Levantine, على / عـ is often used in places where English would use to.

So:

• رحت عالشغل = I went to work
• تأخرت عالشغل = I was late to work

Because prepositions do not match one-for-one across languages.

In Levantine Arabic, على and its short form عـ are often used with common destinations and routines, especially places like:

• عالبيت = home
• عالمدرسة = to school
• عالجامعة = to university
• عالشغل = to work

So even though على often means on, here it is just the normal idiomatic preposition.

Here, الشغل means work.

It is a very common everyday Levantine word and can refer to:

• work in general
• a job
• the workplace
• tasks or business

Compared with العمل:

• الشغل is more conversational and common in speech
• العمل is more formal and closer to Modern Standard Arabic

So in everyday Levantine, عالشغل is much more natural than على العمل.

Because ش and ط are sun letters.

When الـ comes before a sun letter, the ل sound is not pronounced, and the next consonant gets doubled.

So:

• الشغل is pronounced roughly ash-shoghol / ash-shughl
• الطريق is pronounced roughly aṭ-ṭarīʔ

That is why:

• عالشغل sounds like ʿash-shoghol
• بالطريق sounds like biṭ-ṭarīʔ

The spelling still keeps الـ, but the pronunciation changes.

It means because.

It corresponds to more careful spelling لأنه or لأنّو / لأنو depending on dialect and writing style.

In casual Levantine writing, لانه is very common.

You can think of it as:

• لانه كان في زحمة = because there was traffic

Pronunciation varies a bit by region, but something like laʾanno is a good approximation.

Because this is a very common Levantine way to express existence.

In Levantine:

• في can mean there is / there are
• كان في means there was / there were

Examples:

• في مشكلة = there is a problem
• كان في مشكلة = there was a problem
• في ناس = there are people
• كان في ناس = there were people

So كان في زحمة literally works like there was traffic / congestion.

That is a great question, and it is very typical of spoken Levantine.

In the expression كان في..., the verb كان often works as a kind of default existential form, similar to English there was. In everyday speech, speakers very often keep it as كان no matter what noun comes after it.

So all of these are normal in colloquial speech:

• كان في زحمة
• كان في مشكلة
• كان في سيارات

Even though زحمة and مشكلة are feminine, كان في stays very common as a fixed spoken pattern.

زحمة basically means crowding, congestion, or busy packed conditions.

Its exact English translation depends on context:

• المحل زحمة = the store is crowded
• الشارع زحمة = the street is crowded / there’s traffic
• في زحمة = there’s traffic / congestion

In this sentence, because it says بالطريق, the natural meaning is traffic or traffic congestion.

بالطريق means on the road, in the road, or more naturally here, on the way / on the road.

It is:

• بـ = a very flexible preposition
• الطريق = the road / the way

The preposition بـ can cover several English ideas depending on context, such as:

• in
• on
• at
• by

So زحمة بالطريق means there was congestion on the road or on the way.

Yes, the word order is flexible.

تأخرت عالشغل اليوم is a very natural way to say I was late to work today.

But you could also say:

• اليوم تأخرت عالشغل

That version puts more focus on today.

Arabic often allows time expressions like اليوم to move around more freely than English does, while the meaning stays basically the same.