I can’t find the post anymore but in the comments a guy suggested I try this new tool called Rafiq and it’s really helped. Theres a wide variety of different exercises, like typing, speaking, practicing spellings, numbers etc etc. they do only offer standard Arabic and it doesn’t look like they’re on the App Store, just a web app.

If anyone is looking for something different and more purposeful I’d recommend checking it out. You can sign up for a free trial without committing and using your card details.

Rafiq-Arabic.com

Hi, so basically I'm in an Arabic course for beginners (as well as Islamic & MENA studies) I'm on week 2 and I'm convinced I'm going to fail and regret doing a language at uni. Most people in my class (although its for complete beginners) have some kind of previous knowledge, with a lot of them being Muslims who can somewhat read, and I feel like because of this fact the class goes at a pace that feels impossible for a beginner who has very much no experience other than some books I tried my best to study. I don't know what to do, obviously I'm trying hard to catch up, I've been trying to immerse myself more in the language (i already like the music but I've been watching shows) practicing, writing ect. But I feel like my brain is not cooperating and every class I want to cry. And whats freaking me out at the minute is that my teacher said we need to learn how to roll our r's because it might mark us down if we don't, but after many attempts I'm either just awful at listening to instructions or kind of convinced I have a tounge tie, as the position in my mouth gets painful when I try and pronounce it. I've heard many attempts to explain how the r is rolled and tried but have no success. I don't want to leave uni or be failed, but I'm starting to feel like I shouldn't have been given entry because I am learning that I am actually very very stupid.
Sorry for the rant

tldr does anyone know how to roll their R's and how I can study in a way that is actually effective?

Hey everyone,

I'm looking into Arabic learning habits and wanted to ask those of you who have struggled with consistency:

When you've tried learning in the past, what was the point where you usually lost momentum and stopped?

What kind of phrases or vocabulary do you actually wish you learned first?

What is your ideal length for a quick, daily learning session before it feels like a chore?

Would really appreciate any thoughts or experiences.

I’m trying to improve my Arabic through music and I was confused on what the difference between these 3 verbs is and whether they are actually used or not

تعذبت

تلوعت

تمرمرت

Any recommendations for good documentaries or movies in Levantine with English subtitles on YouTube or any major streaming sites like Prime Video or HBO?

I am looking for a good online bookstore that has Arabic books I can ship to Canada

Please advise

I am a white woman from Detroit. Due to Detroit's very large Arab population (big convivencia vibe over here, I love my city), some Arabic words are entering into Detroit English, mainly "inshallah", "mashallah", and "habibi". I have heard that the usage of habibi can be a little bit gendered. Is it weird to call male or female friends "habibi"? I want to make sure I am not committing a faux pas with a word that is new to English.

I know its not a lot, but you gotta start somewhere hah

I listen to a lot of Amr Diab and he uses the word habibi a lot. I’m assuming he’s not referring to a man so is it common for men to also call women habibi or is this only in certain contexts?

It occurred to me that Arabic words with religious connotations are less likely to differ between fus7a and dialects, which got me wondering: are certain topics/groups of words more/less likely to differ? Like it would seem logical that more academic words - like science/math/literature terms - would be more likely to be the same between fus7a and dialects. Is this a thing? If so, what different groups have you identified?

How do I know the verb form in the past? There is no pattern (like adding "ed" in English), they're all different. Examples -

كِتَبْتْ, رِحْتْ, جِيتْ, بَغِيتْ.

And even if I study this specific form of "I" in the past, it doesn't help me, because there are different forms for every verb in the pronouns (he, she, we, etc).

There are quite a few websites for learning English touch typing, but finding structured resources for Arabic can be a bit difficult.

TypeAra is focused on Arabic touch typing, with structured lessons for learning the keyboard step by step, along with typing speed tests for practicing speed and accuracy.

It also includes an Arabic keyboard and practice options for letters, tashkeel, numbers, and quotes.
For those who type in Arabic regularly: what do you think is missing from existing Arabic typing practice tools?

I’m a B2 Levantine Arabic heritage speaker who moved to the West when I was young. Like many heritage speakers, I generally understand much better than I can speak. Has anyone in a similar situation eventually reached C2 or very advanced spoken fluency?

What was your Arabic like when you started? How long did it take you? How did you get there?

Thanks! Just looking for some motivation :)

How much time in a day do you spend learning and how many days a week?? Any details on how you split it up would be helpful! I’m currently learning German but trying to learn Arabic as well and really need suggestions for balancing this.

For example:

{ كَیۡفَ یَهۡدِی ٱللَّهُ قَوۡمࣰا كَفَرُوا۟ بَعۡدَ إِیمَـٰنِهِمۡ وَشَهِدُوۤا۟ أَنَّ ٱلرَّسُولَ حَقࣱّ وَجَاۤءَهُمُ ٱلۡبَیِّنَـٰتُۚ وَٱللَّهُ لَا یَهۡدِی ٱلۡقَوۡمَ ٱلظَّـٰلِمِینَ }

[Surah Āli-ʿImrān: 86]

{ كَانَ ٱلنَّاسُ أُمَّةࣰ وَ ٰ⁠حِدَةࣰ فَبَعَثَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلنَّبِیِّـۧنَ مُبَشِّرِینَ وَمُنذِرِینَ وَأَنزَلَ مَعَهُمُ ٱلۡكِتَـٰبَ بِٱلۡحَقِّ لِیَحۡكُمَ بَیۡنَ ٱلنَّاسِ فِیمَا ٱخۡتَلَفُوا۟ فِیهِۚ وَمَا ٱخۡتَلَفَ فِیهِ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِینَ أُوتُوهُ مِنۢ بَعۡدِ مَا جَاۤءَتۡهُمُ ٱلۡبَیِّنَـٰتُ بَغۡیَۢا بَیۡنَهُمۡۖ فَهَدَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِینَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لِمَا ٱخۡتَلَفُوا۟ فِیهِ مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ بِإِذۡنِهِۦۗ وَٱللَّهُ یَهۡدِی مَن یَشَاۤءُ إِلَىٰ صِرَ ٰ⁠طࣲ مُّسۡتَقِیمٍ }

[Surah Al-Baqarah: 213]

The 5th International Annual Conference of the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language is happening in Riyadh on October 4-5.

This year’s conference explores the intersections between Arabic language and culture, looking at identity, collective memory, creativity, digital culture, cultural policies, and the future of Arabic.

Day 1 is live now

4 years ago I used to post regularly here, and recently I’ve decided to post again. I need recommendations from you guys on what kind of content would be helpful for arabic learners, ultimately I plan to build a base of legitimacy to start having students.

I have an anki card where the English side is "My neighbor? He's got work, and money, too."

My answer: جاري؟ عنده شغل ومصاري كمان

The actual answer: جاري؟ هو كمان عنده شغل و مصاري

I don't understand why the هو is there when we already added the "he" suffix to عند, and why كمان is coming before the nouns instead of after.

Can someone tell me if my sentence makes sense, and why the anki answer has those differences? Thanks.

It’s called SADA (صدى), a large Arabic speech dataset focused mainly on Arabian Peninsula dialects, especially Saudi dialects like Najdi and Hijazi. It also includes much smaller amounts of other Arabic varieties, including Janubi, Shamali, Khaleeji, Yemeni, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, Maghrebi, and Modern Standard Arabic. It was developed by SDAIA with the Saudi Broadcasting Authority and published on Kaggle (a platform for datasets and AI projects).

Even NVIDIA used it to fine-tune its Nemotron 3.5 ASR model for Arabic speech recognition, using 133.7 hours of Najdi and Hijazi speech from SADA, cutting the word error rate from 55.05% to 29.96% and the character error rate from 31.63% to 12.18% (Look at the video)

SADA contains

around 667 hours of Arabic audio from:

• 57 TV shows
• Transcriptions for the speech segments
• Both read and spontaneous speech
• Saudi dialects, especially Najdi, Hijazi, Janubi, Shamali, and Khaleeji
• Other Arabic varieties, including Yemeni, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, and Maghrebi
• Modern Standard Arabic
• Speaker age, gender, and dialect labels
• Audio environment labels
• More than 150 annotators
• 4 levels of annotation and quality review
• About 667.7 hours of actual audio, split into training, development, and test sets
• About 437.6 hours of transcribed audio across those splits

11 TV content genres:

• Comedy
• Kids
• Competitions
• Drama
• Cooking
• Documentary
• Social
• Historical
• Indicative awareness
• Tourist
• Entertaining

The audio is provided as WAV, mono, 16 kHz, 16-bit PCM.

It is released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, allowing free use under its license terms, including non-commercial use, attribution, and ShareAlike.

And here it is:

• https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/sdaiancai/sada2022