You’ll  hear the word “جد” spoken in Levantine Arabic pretty frequently, most notably in the phrase “عن جد” (a3n jadd), meaning “seriously!” or “really!” Alternatively, it can be used in the form of a question. For example, if your friend just informed you of something that seemed improbable, you could respond with, “عن جد؟” or “بتحكي جد؟” (bti7ki jadd?), both of which mean “are you serious?”

The term جدية (jiddiye or jaddiye), like جد, means “seriousness”. You may use the word with “ب” to denote that a particular task needs to be done with a sense of seriousness. For example:

“لازم تدرس بجدية” (laazim tudros bi-jiddiye) translates to “you need to really study!” or “you need to seriously study!”

“أخذت الفكرة بجدية” (akhadt il-fikra bi-jiddiye) translates to “I took the idea seriously”.

If you want to say that something needs to be taken seriously, you can use the verb “بد”, which means to want. For example:

“هدا ألسؤال بده جدية” (haada as-suwaal biddoo jiddiye), meaning “this question needs to be taken seriously”. Note that while in Modern Standard Arabic, “this” would be the word هذا, in Levantine Arabic you will find people pronouncing it as هدا. Please note that the word هدا is just one of the ways that someone might say “this” in colloquial. The Levant is a rather large area comprising of a handful of countries and so there are different variations of the same word.