Arabic
Arabic — the Afro-Asiatic family, between 300 and 380 million speakers, depending on which varieties you count as one language (estimate, Ethnologue). Script: an abjad of 28 letters: short vowels are not written, the line runs right to left, and the letters join into one shape.
One phrase, two short checks
Demo language: Arabic
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نهارك سعيد
нахарак саʿид
good day
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نهارك سعيد
нахарак саʿид
- good day
- please (as a request)
- hi
- goodbye
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نهارك سعيد
good day
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___, كيف حالك؟
Good day, how are you?
- مرحبا · мархаба
- من · мин
- نهارك سعيد · нахарак саʿид
- مع · маа
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نهارك سعيد
good day
Two checks complete
نهارك سعيد
good day
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Answers stay on this page. Statistics include the demo stage, overall result, interface language and saved counter consent choice, without answer text or a profile.
Where to start
A young course: the words, the lessons and the recordings are all here, but a native speaker has not read it end to end yet. Spot a rough edge — tell us and we will fix it.
- →Arabic alphabetAll letters and how they are read
- →Arabic wordsBy topic and alphabetically
- →PhrasebookPhrases ready to use
- →GrammarRules without jargon
- →Reading textsShort texts with translation
- →How to readThe writing course from zero
- →TransliterationThe table, both ways
- →PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
- →From scratchWhere to start, and in what order
- →How long to studyAn honest estimate, with caveats
First words
Every conversation starts with them — and so does the first impression: one greeting in the local language and you stop being a stranger within a second.
- مرحباмархабаhithe h here is the breathy throat one (ح) — marhaba on an audible breath out of the throat
- نهارك سعيدнахарак саʿидgood dayLiterally "your day [be] happy". Arabic has no plain "good day" — it is said as a wish, and the answer is expected in the same shape
- شكراшукранthank youthe kh is the scraping one (خ), a breath from the throat
- من فضلكмин фадликplease (as a request)Literally "out of your generosity". It closes a request the way please does in English — or opens it, for extra weight
- مع السلامةмаа ас-салямаgoodbyeLiterally "go with safety". Salama here is being safe: a wish to arrive whole, not a farewell forever
- كيف حالك؟кейфа хаалюк؟how are you?Literally "how is your state?". The -uk on the end is "your": to a man haaluk, to a woman haaluki
- كيف حالكم؟кейфа хаалюкум؟how are you all?The plural you. To one respected person the plural is heard too — haalukum serves as the polite form
- إلى اللقاءиля аль-ликааsee youLiterally "to the meeting". Warmer than maa as-salama, and among friends it lives on its own
About the language
| Native name | العربية · al-arabiyya |
| Official in | Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and about 20 more countries |
| Also spoken in | France, Germany, the USA and the United Kingdom |
| How many speakers | between 300 and 380 million speakers, depending on which varieties you count as one language (estimate, Ethnologue) |
| Family | the Afro-Asiatic family, Semitic group — its closest living relative is Hebrew |
| Script | an abjad of 28 letters: short vowels are not written, the line runs right to left, and the letters join into one shape |
| Writing direction | right to left |
Hard: a script without short vowels — a word of bare consonants can be read in several ways — and sounds English does not have at all.
Easy: vocabulary grows from three-consonant roots: recognize the root and you recognize a whole family of words.
What people most often take it up for: work in the Gulf, reading the news and scripture in the original, moving to the region.
Curiosities in Arabic
Arabic lives on two floors, and the very term “diglossia” was coined by Ferguson on Arabic material: newspapers, books and school use the modern standard, while home and the street use the local dialect. Standard Arabic is nobody’s mother tongue: school gives it, not childhood.
C. A. Ferguson, “Diglossia”, Word, vol. 15, 1959
How lessons work
A lesson is up to half an hour a day, split into three to five short sessions. A word comes back not on the course's schedule but at the moment you are about to forget it: the interval is computed by an algorithm from your own answers.
- The longer you want to keep a word, the longer the gap before reviewing it can be. To hold it for a week, review it after a day or two; to hold it for a year, after about three or four weeks.checked many timesCepeda et al., 2008, Psychological Science 19(11) · Over 1,350 participants, tested after delays of up to a year. The best gap is about 20–40% of the target interval when you need to remember for a week, and 5–10% when for a year.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- A material reward promised for doing a task lowers the wish to take it up of your own accord once the reward is gone. Praise for what was done, on the contrary, keeps that wish alive.checked many timesDeci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999, Psychological Bulletin 125(6) · 128 experiments. A material reward promised in advance and the time later spent on the task by free choice: d = −0.44 for finishing, −0.40 for taking part, −0.28 for performance; a reward unrelated to the task, −0.14, not significant. Praise: +0.33.
Frequently asked
Where to start learning Arabic?
With the script: 28 letters are worked through in a week or two, and after that words stop being pictures.
How many people speak Arabic?
Between 300 and 380 million speakers, depending on which varieties you count as one language — an estimate; source: Ethnologue. Nobody runs an exact census of languages, and sources disagree by noticeable amounts.
Is Arabic hard?
A script without short vowels — a word of bare consonants can be read in several ways — and sounds English does not have at all. At the same time, vocabulary grows from three-consonant roots: recognize the root and you recognize a whole family of words.
Where is Arabic spoken?
An official language in: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and about 20 more countries. Noticeable communities: France, Germany, the USA and the United Kingdom.