Arabic by topic
Here are 4011 words in Arabic; 1368 of them are sorted into topics, from greetings to directions and money, and the rest are gathered in the A–Z index. Each topic has its own set, and it is best to take them by circumstance: what you will need tomorrow sticks much better than an abstract list.
Reading guides and translations in each topic
Open a topic to see spelling and translations, plus reading guides for words with a transcription. Words with a speaker icon have a recording. Download the set as a CSV or open a separate printable sheet.
Topics
- 👋Greetings and goodbyes9 words — Every conversation starts here, and so does every first impression: say hello in the local language and you stop being a stranger in about a second.
- 🔢Numbers and counting57 words — A price, the change, a house number, the time you agreed on, the floor. Numbers are the first thing you have to catch by ear — and the first thing people say fast.
- 🍽Food and drink177 words — A menu, a market, a shop sign, the question “what is this?”. Food is the most frequent subject of the first weeks and the safest excuse to start talking.
- ☕At a café and a restaurant9 words — Order, ask the price, ask for the bill. A short and entirely predictable conversation — a convenient place to test yourself for the first time.
- 🛒Shopping and money82 words — How much it costs, whether there is a smaller one, whether cards are accepted. A shop forgives mistakes: miss a word and they will show you the thing with their hands anyway.
- 🧭Asking the way18 words — Right, left, straight on, how far. You ask the way rarely — and always at the moment when there is no time to work it out.
- 🚌Transport14 words — Bus, metro, taxi, stop, station. These are words you need to recognize in writing — off a departure board and off a sign.
- 🏙The city and its places81 words — Street, square, pharmacy, bank. An address is built out of these, and an address is something you have to both say and understand.
- 📍Buildings and premises25 words — Where to go and what is done there. These words are read off a sign more often than they are spoken.
- 🕐Time, days and hours137 words — Today, tomorrow, in the morning, at six. You cannot arrange to meet without these — let alone understand the answer.
- 👪People and family195 words — Mum, friend, child, neighbour. The first thing people ask you about, and the first thing you tell about yourself.
- 🫵Pronouns27 words — I, you, we, they. There is a handful of them, they turn up in every sentence, and politeness rides on them: most of these languages keep a formal “you” apart from a familiar one, and choosing the wrong one is noticed faster than a mispronounced word.
- 🏃Verbs111 words — I want, I can, I am going, I know. The verb holds a sentence together: a few of the most frequent ones cover more everyday talk than a long list of nouns.
- 🆘Phrases that save you17 words — “I don't understand”, “say that again”, “slower, please”, “help”. They are learned first for a reason: they bring back a conversation that has already gone wrong.
- 🏠Everyday life and routine13 words — Work, home, rest, errands. The words the answer to “how are things?” is made of.
- 🛋Home and things197 words — Room, key, water, electricity. You will need them on your first day in a rented flat.
- ⭐Basic words308 words — Yes, no, good, bad, very. The small change of a language — and no sentence assembles without it.
All words A to Z
Sorted by the first letter of the translation: searching by meaning beats searching by an unfamiliar spelling.
Where Arabic words come from
Coffee, sugar and admiral came into the European languages from Arabic: qahwa travelled through Turkish kahve, sukkar through Latin and Italian, and amīr al-baḥr, “commander of the sea”, became the title of a fleet commander — with the Arabic article still inside the word.
Oxford English Dictionary, s.vv. “coffee”, “sugar” and “admiral”
In what order to take them
The order is not arbitrary. First comes what rescues a conversation that has already gone wrong: “I don't understand”, “repeat, please”, “slower”. Then politeness and greetings: they are short, you hear them every day, and every exchange starts with them. After that it depends on your situation: cafés and shops if you are travelling, city and transport if you have moved, family if the language is for the people around you.
Counting words is useful, with care. “I know 95% of the words in a conversation” and “I understand the conversation” are very different claims: 95% means one unknown word in twenty — and that unknown word is quite often the one that matters.
- To follow about 95% of ordinary conversation you need around 3,000 words. But 95% means one unknown word in twenty — not “I understand nearly everything”.checked many timesAdolphs & Schmitt, 2003, Applied Linguistics 24(4) · Counted across two large collections of recorded speech: CANCODE (5 million words) and the BNC. Word families were counted, not each form separately.
- Reading a book without a dictionary takes 8,000–9,000 words; following speech by ear just as freely takes 6,000–7,000.checked many timesNation, 2006, Canadian Modern Language Review 63(1); Hu & Nation, 2000 · The threshold for independent reading is 98% of words known, not 95%. Word families were counted.
Frequently asked
How many words to get by in Arabic?
About three thousand. Then roughly 95 words in every hundred of an ordinary conversation are familiar. But that does not mean “I understand 95% of conversations”: every twentieth word is unknown — and it is quite often exactly the word the sentence was said for.
Which words to start with?
With the ones that rescue you: “I don't understand”, “repeat, please”, “slower”, “thank you”. They bring back a conversation that has already gone wrong, which makes them more useful than any nouns.
How many words can you actually memorize a day?
Five to seven new ones per session plus a few reviews of old ones — a pace you can keep up for months. Thirty words in an evening are remembered for an evening.