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Learn Arabic

Learn Arabic reading, Arabic writing and Arabic speaking with these free words and sentences about greetings, saying Hello and common phrases. All words and sentences are spoken by real Arabic natives and this helps you in learning the correct pronunciation.

Our ten Arabic lessons teach you some of the most important Arabic words and phrases. We will try to make your learning Arabic as easy as possible and give you a lot of resources about Arabic.

If you like the lessons, you can subscribe to our free seven days email course which will give you Arabic grammar notes, top 1000 Arabic words and much more!

Lesson 1: Introduction

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مرحبا

marhaba

Hello


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كيف حالك

kayfa halak?

How are you?


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أنا بخير, شكرا

ana bikhayr, shukran.

I'm fine, thank you.


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اسمى تانجا

ismi tanja.

My name is Tanja.


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لطيف أن أقابلك

latif an uqabilak.

Nice to meet you.


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مع السلامة

ma-assalama

Goodbye


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هل تتكلم الانجليزية؟

hal tatakallam alingliziyya?

Do you speak English?


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نعم, أنا أتكلم الانجليزية.

na-am, ana atakallam alingliziyya.

Yes, I speak English.


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لا, أنا لا اتكلم الانجليزية.

la, ana la atakallam alingliziyya.

No, I don't speak English.


→ Continue learning Arabic with L-Lingo, which has pictures!

How to learn Arabic?

  1. Get an Arabic Phrasebook and write simple phrases and words on Flashcards and memorize them
  2. Study the Arabic Script and the fundamentals of the Arabic Language, e.g. how to construct questions, pronunciation etc.
  3. Try and find a good Arabic teacher or other person to talk with you or enroll in an Arabic language class.
  4. Make sure the teacher speaks in MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) and that your texbooks follows MSA as well
  5. Use a spaced repetition vocabulary builder to learn Arabic words and phrases

Check out our comprehensive Arabic learning App L-Lingo which contains 105 lessons with grammar notes, thousands of words and high quality audio.

Arabic Grammar

A major challenge to beginners with Arabic is perhaps its script, written from right to left, with most letters connected to preceding and/or following ones, and no short vowels shown. 

MSA has managed to simplify Arabic grammar to suit the requirements of modern-day communication. For example, instead of the 15 personal pronouns resulting from gender and number considerations, MSA uses only 8, that is, the same number as English. 

Arabic does not use capital letters, but letters may change shape depending on their position within a word.

Arabic Alphabet and Pronunciation

The huge diversity of the cultures that have interacted with classical Arabic over the centuries have resulted in numerous dialects and pronunciations. However, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), exists as an established, exemplary code that everyone goes by.

The following shows the Arabic letters and the corresponding English words they are pronounced like:

Consonants Vowels
ب = be َ = Pat
د = did ا = Bad
ض = daughter ُ = Put
ذ = The و = Boot
ج = Joy ِ = Sit
ظ = Thus ي = See
ف = fire
ه = Hi
ح = hard
ي = Yes
ك = Keen
ل = Line
م = Man
ن = No
ث = Thing
ق = Scar
ر = Dark
س = See
ص = Massage
ش = She
ت = tea
ط = Star
و = We
خ = Loch (scottish)
غ = French R
ز = zoo
ع = No equivalent
ء = above

Nouns

Arabic has no indefinite article comparable to the English (a) or (an). It does have a definite article the [al], which is always attached to the words it defines.

A house = [bayt] بيت
THE house = al+bayt = [albayt] البيت

When using two or more nouns in conjunction, the word (wa), consisting of the single letter (و) is used to link the items.

رجل و ولد
[ragul wa walad]
A man and a boy.

دراجة وسفينة وسيارة
[darraga wa safina wa sayyara]
A bike and a ship and a car

Verbs

Arabic verbs change their form in accordance with their subjects. There are two important forms, which indicate, masculine and feminine.

Present Tense

In the sentence, The man is walking [arragul yamshi], the subject (man) is masculine. In this case, (ya) is attached to the verb (mshi) to make up the form (yamshi). In Arabic script, that is ي + مشي = يمشي. The full sentence is then: الرجل يمشي.

When the subject is feminine, as in The woman is sitting = almar-a taglis, (ta) is attached to (glis) to form (taglis). That is again ت + جلس = تجلس and in full: المرأة تجلس.

Verb forms starting with (ya) can express the plural masculine when put at the beginning of the sentence, as in يجري الولد والرجل [yagri alwalad wa arragul] / The boy and the man are running.

A verb form with (ta) at the beginning of the sentence can indicate the plural feminine, as in تمشي المرأة والبنت [tamshi almar-a wa albint] / The woman and the girl are walking.

It is important to note here that Arabic uses the same form for both types of the present, the simple and the continuous. Thus, we would use the same form to say 'the man speaks Arabic' and 'the man is speaking Arabic', that is الرجل يتكلم عربي [arragul yatakallam araby].

Future Tense

The easier tense to learn after the present is the future, since it simply adds the marker سوف [sawfa] / will before the verb.

Present: الرجل يشرب الكولا [arragul yashrab alcola] / The man is drinking Cola.
Future: الرجل سوف يشرب الكولا [arragul sawfa yashrab alcola] / The man will drink Cola.

The future marker سوف [sawfa] can be reduced to its short form س [sa] and attached to the verb.

Past Tense

The past tense often changes the vowel pattern of the verb and any additional gender or number indicators are attached as suffixes (endings).

Present: هي تشرب [hiya tashrab] / She drinks / She is drinking
Past: هي شربت [hiya sharibat] / She drank

Notice how the vowel pattern in the verb has changed from 'shrab' to 'shariba', or from 'a' alone to 'a+i+a'. Also note that that there is a ت [t] at the ending.

Prepositions

Prepositions are words used to express location/position.

Example:
البنت تذهب إلى غرفة المعيشة [albint tadh-hab ila ghorfat alma-isha]
The girl is going to the living-room

الرجل في المطبخ [arragul fi almatbakh]
The man is in the kitchen.

With the verbs 'look' ينظر [yandhor] and 'sit' يجلس [yaglis], 'ila' takes on the meaning of 'at', as in the sentences:

الولد ينظر إلى السيارة [alwalad yandhor ila assayara] / The boy is looking at the car.
السكرتيرة تجلس إلى الكمبيوتر [assecretira taglis ila alcomputer] / The secretary is sitting at the computer.

This is just a short introduction to Arabic. If you like to get a free comprehensive Arabic Grammar, subscribe to our Seven Day Email Course which includes a 20 page Grammar Book!


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