יאללה
YA-la
Let's go; come on; hurry up.
What does it literally mean, and what do Israelis actually mean?
What it literally means
Literal: "O God" (yā Allāh).
יאללה, קום, אנחנו מאחרים!Yalla, kum, anachnu me'acharim!Come on, get up, we're late!
What Israelis actually mean
"let's go," "come on," "hurry," "enough already", plus phone-closing "yalla bye."
יאללה ביי, מדברים אחר כך.Yalla bye, medabrim achar-kach.Gotta run, talk later.
Where did this word come from?
From Arabic يالله (yalla), a contraction of يا الله (yā Allāh, "O God"), an exhortation that became the general "let's go / come on / hurry up" across Arabic dialects; borrowed into Hebrew (and into Turkish, Persian, and beyond).
Register & social context
Casual, universal, pan-Israeli across all communities, and used identically by Arabic speakers. Exported abroad in the hybrid "yalla bye."
Root & morphology
None, borrowed whole from Arabic.
Influences & contact languages
- Arabic· contactArabic yalla, contraction of yā Allāh, the pan-Levantine exhortation, borrowed via Palestinian/Israeli contact Hebrew in the 20th century.
Which places are associated with this word?
This word travels through people, not places, so we don't pin it.
See where it lives in the language constellationHear it in the wild
יאללה, קום, אנחנו מאחרים!
Yalla, kum, anachnu me'acharim!
Come on, get up, we're late!
יאללה ביי, מדברים אחר כך.
Yalla bye, medabrim achar-kach.
Gotta run, talk later.
What English speakers get wrong
It's not exclusively Israeli or Hebrew, it's the shared exhortation of the whole Eastern Mediterranean (Arabic speakers use it identically); claiming it as "a Hebrew word" erases its Arabic life.
What lives next to this word?
See the language constellation
Follow this word into a guided story
Sources & review
Want to use this word? Understand it inside a full sentence: Open baba →