أنتظر خمس دقائق.

A careful fully vocalized reading is:

أَنْتَظِرُ خَمْسَ دَقَائِقَ

A common transliteration is:

antaẓiru khamsa daqāʾiqa

A few pronunciation notes:

• أنتظر = an-ta-ẓi-ru
• خمس starts with خ, a throaty sound not found in English
• ظ is an emphatic Arabic consonant; learners often approximate it at first, and that is normal
• دقائق contains ق, a deep q sound, and ء (hamza), a glottal stop

Because the verb already tells you the subject.

In أنتظر, the prefix أ- marks first person singular, so the verb itself means I wait / I am waiting.

So:

• أنتظر خمس دقائق = I wait / I am waiting five minutes
• أنا أنتظر خمس دقائق = also correct, but أنا adds emphasis, contrast, or clarity

In normal Arabic, subject pronouns are often omitted when the verb already makes the subject clear.

It is the imperfect form of the verb, which in English can correspond to several present-time meanings depending on context:

• I wait
• I am waiting
• sometimes even I will wait, if the context makes it future

So Arabic does not force the same tense distinction that English does between I wait and I am waiting. Context does that job.

Arabic often expresses a length of time without a separate word for for.

So:

• أنتظر خمس دقائق literally looks like I wait five minutes
• but it naturally means I wait for five minutes

This is a very common Arabic pattern with expressions of time and duration.

If you want a more explicit phrasing, Arabic can also use expressions like:

• لمدة خمس دقائق = for a period of five minutes

But in simple sentences, the bare time expression is very normal.

Because Arabic numbers from 3 to 10 usually show gender polarity: the number takes the opposite gender of the noun being counted.

Here, the noun is:

• دقيقة = minute, and it is feminine

So the number used is:

• خمس rather than خمسة

A useful comparison:

• خمس دقائق = five minutes
• خمسة كتب = five books

Since كتب refers to كتاب, which is masculine, the number appears as خمسة.

Because after the numbers 3–10, the counted noun is normally plural in Arabic.

So:

• خمس دقائق = five minutes
• not خمس دقيقة

Also, دقائق is the broken plural of دقيقة.

This is one of the standard number patterns in Arabic:

• 3–10 → number + plural noun

In a fully grammatical analysis, this is an expression of duration, so the phrase functions in the accusative.

If you show the endings fully, you get:

خمسَ دقائقَ

Why does دقائق end in fatḥa here, even though it is part of a number construction where the noun is genitive? Because دقائق is a type of plural that is often treated as diptote, so in the genitive it takes fatḥa instead of kasra.

This is an advanced point, though. In everyday unvocalized Arabic writing, learners usually just need to recognize the written form:

خمس دقائق

No, not as written.

• أنتظر خمس دقائق = I wait / I am waiting five minutes
• انتظر خمس دقائق = Wait five minutes! (said to one male)

So the version with أ at the beginning is the first-person present form, while the command is written without that hamza.

For one female, the command would be:

• انتظري خمس دقائق

So this spelling difference matters.

The verb is أنتظر, from the dictionary form:

انتظر = to wait / await

It comes from the root:

ن ظ ر

You may already know the related verb:

نظر = to look

But انتظر is a different verb pattern and means to wait, not simply to look. This is a good example of how Arabic verb patterns can create related but distinct meanings from the same root.