בָּא לִי (ba li) — I feel like it; I want to
Etymology
The phrase בָּא לִי ("ba li," literally "it comes to me") is one of the most distinctive and widely used expressions in colloquial Israeli Hebrew — and one of the stranger ones, because it uses a verb of motion (to come) to express desire or inclination. A two-year-old Israeli can be heard saying "לֹא בָּא לִי" ("I don't feel like it") dozens of times a day. The construction became prevalent in the 1970s and has since become so natural that most Hebrew speakers don't notice its peculiarity.
The expression is first documented in the comedy troupe HaGashash HaHiver's recording "Shirat HaBirbur" (1967), which includes the lines: "Come down with some flour. Lo ba li. Lo ba lo. Ba li coffee." By 1971, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was using the phrase in a media statement; by 1973 it appeared in novels; by 1974 a Reshet Bet radio program was called "Ba Li Jazz." The 1979 film Shlager featured the hit "Shir HaFarha" with its famous refrain: "Because ba li to dance, and ba li nonsense, ba li to laugh and lo ba li about you..."
Two competing internal Hebrew explanations exist for its origin. One proposes that speakers dropped the subject from sentences like "בָּא לִי הַחֵשֶׁק" ("the desire came to me") and "בָּא לִי הָרָצוֹן" ("the will came to me"), leaving only "ba li." Another proposes that it began as a translation of "it came to me" in the sense of creative inspiration — a usage documentable in the 1960s among artists and writers.
However, neither of these fully explains the phrase. The evidence strongly points to an origin in Mizrahi immigrant communities — the neighborhoods where immigrants from Arab countries spoke Arabic, French, and Hebrew interchangeably. The earliest press citations with the phrase in the "I want to" sense, from 1969, all come from Mizrahi speakers: actor Yosef Shiloah (from Kurdistan, raised in Rishon LeZion's "Shikun HaMizrah"), a Shimshon Tel Aviv football fan quoted by a reporter for Al HaMishmar, characters in Menachem Talmi's columns mimicking the street speech of Jaffa residents.
The Arabic source is the expression אַגַ׳א עַ-בַּאלִי (ʾajā ʿal-bālī), meaning literally "it came upon my heart/mind" — functionally meaning "I feel like, I want to." The word בַּאל here is the Arabic word for "heart" or "mind," familiar to Hebrew speakers from the phrase דִּיר בַּאלַכּ ("dir balak," "watch out," literally "put your heart to it"). The Arabic phrase conjugates just like the Hebrew phrase: ʾajā ʿal-balak = "ba lekha"; ʾajā ʿal-balo = "ba lo" — and in Arabic one can even drop the verb ʾajā entirely and say just ʿal-bālī, which (except for the pharyngeal ʿayin that Israeli speakers typically drop anyway) is nearly identical to the Hebrew "ba li."
Key Quotes
"תרד עם סולת. לא בא לי. לא בא לו. בא לי קפה" — הגשש החיוור, "שירת הבירבור," 1967
"לא היו דברים מעולם... כמו שאומרים בשפה מדוברת 'לא בא לי' לדבר" — משה דיין, הארץ, דצמבר 1971
"כי בא לי לרקוד, ובא לי שטויות, בא לי לצחוק ולא בא לי עליך" — "שיר הפרחה," סרט שלאגר, 1979
Timeline
- Arabic: ʾajā ʿal-bālī — standard Arabic idiom meaning "I feel like / I want to"
- 1950s–1960s: Mizrahi immigrant neighborhoods in Israel blend Arabic and Hebrew in everyday speech; "ba li" develops as calque
- 1967: First documented use: HaGashash HaHiver's "Shirat HaBirbur" recording
- 1969: First press citations (Maariv, Al HaMishmar) in the sense of "I want to"; all from Mizrahi-background speakers
- 1971: Moshe Dayan uses the phrase in a media statement — signals it has reached mainstream awareness
- 1973: Appears in novels by Naomi Frankel and Ora Shem-Or
- 1974: Radio program "Ba Li Jazz" on Reshet Bet
- 1979: "Shir HaFarha" (film Shlager) cements the phrase in popular culture
- Present: Universal in spoken Israeli Hebrew across all ages and backgrounds
Related Words
- לֹא בָּא לִי — I don't feel like it (the negative, most common form)
- נִשְׁבַּר לִי — I'm fed up (similar colloquial structure)
- דִּיר בַּאלַכּ — watch out, be careful (from the same Arabic bāl/heart)
- בָּא לִי הַחֵשֶׁק — (the desire came to me) — a possible intermediate form