الباب ضيق.

The door is narrow.

Breakdown of الباب ضيق.

• باب: door
• ضيق: narrow; tight

Questions & Answers about الباب ضيق.

How do you pronounce الباب ضيق in Levantine Arabic?

A common Levantine pronunciation is el-bāb ḍayyeʔ.

• الباب → el-bāb or il-bāb
• ضيق → ḍayyeʔ in many urban Levantine accents

A few pronunciation notes:

• بَاب has a long ā sound: bāb
• ض is an emphatic/heavy d sound, written here as ḍ
• In many Levantine dialects, the final ق is pronounced as a glottal stop ʔ, so ضيق sounds like ḍayyeʔ
• In some accents, you may hear ḍayyeq instead

Why is there no word for is in the sentence?

Because in Arabic, present-tense sentences like this usually do not use a separate word for is.

So Arabic says:

• الباب ضيق
• literally: the door narrow

But in natural English, that means the door is narrow.

This is very normal in both Standard Arabic and Levantine. If you want past tense, then you do use a verb such as كان:

• الباب كان ضيق = The door was narrow

Why does الباب have ال but ضيق does not?