Hebrew and Spoken Arabic — How Similar Are They?

Hebrew and spoken Arabic are not as similar as you might think.

Many think they are quite similar, being both of Semitic origin and sharing a lot of common concepts.

There are definitely many similarities between Hebrew and spoken Arabic. There are related words (including the numbers), some common grammatical concepts, alphabets with related letter names, and similar vocalisations (a tendency to say “kh”).

But as someone who knows decent spoken Arabic and who has a solid foundation in Hebrew, I can tell you from personal experience with both that spoken Arabic and spoken Hebrew are quite different.

Read on to find out more.

Why think Hebrew and Arabic are similar?

It’s tempting to think Arabic and Hebrew are similar because they’re related.

They are, after all from the same language family — Semitic languages — and have evolved in an overlapping region of the world.

The Semitic language family includes Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Maltese, several languages spoken in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the Modern South Arabian languages. Arabic has by far the most speakers (see our guide to the dialects of Arabic here). Amharic, widely spoken in Ethiopia, also has many more speakers than Hebrew.

Europeans and English speakers are familiar with the concept of language families.

You might be familiar with Romance languages, like French and Spanish, and know that they have a lot in common: similar conjugation patterns, sentence order, vocabulary and concepts like gender. But speaking French doesn’t automatically mean you can follow a conversation in Spanish, or vice versa.

Or you might know Germanic languages, like German and Dutch (or Yiddish). You’d know that again, they have the same things in common. These can be even closer. German and Yiddish are actually often mutually intelligible, if you squint your ears.

Arabic and Hebrew generally aren’t mutually intelligible. You might recognise individual words without being able to follow a conversation, much as an English speaker might when listening to German.

Similarities between Hebrew and Spoken Arabic

We speak Egyptian Arabic, one of the most widely spoken Arabic dialects. Arabic dialects share a lot of grammar, but they differ in pronunciation, vocabulary and some sentence patterns.

For example, the spoken grammar in Egyptian Arabic is very similar to that in Palestinian Arabic, spoken throughout Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (mostly the West Bank/Gaza). I have a good understanding of Levantine Arabic so the same similarities exist.

Let’s start with the similarities between spoken Hebrew and spoken Arabic:

• They’re both Semitic languages. That includes all the dialects of Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, alongside Hebrew and the other languages mentioned above.
• Both Hebrew and Arabic rely on systems of roots. Most roots have three consonants, though some have four. You’ll see the same root letters in clusters of words with related meanings, like words about writing.
• Some conjugation patterns overlap between Hebrew and Arabic. Both use endings to change past-tense verbs for different subjects, and some of those endings sound familiar across the two languages. Their present-tense systems work differently, as we’ll see below.
• Hebrew and Arabic have related alphabets. Some letter names sound similar, like Hebrew alef (א) and Arabic alif (ا), or Hebrew bet (ב) and Arabic baa’ (ب). But the letters don’t always have the same sounds in modern speech.
• Some Hebrew and Arabic words sound very similar. Words for “night”, “four”, “house” and “date” (the fruit) come from related words in the two languages. They aren’t always pronounced the same way.
• Neither language normally marks all its vowels in everyday writing. You have to fill in many of the vowel sounds yourself, though Arabic writes long vowels with letters and Hebrew also uses some letters to indicate vowels. Both have vowel-mark systems for when readers need more guidance: you’ll see them in dictionaries, children’s books, poetry and religious texts, or on an individual word to make its pronunciation clear.
• Both Hebrew and Arabic have older literary forms. You’ll often meet Biblical Hebrew and Classical Arabic in religious texts, but Classical Arabic also has a long history of poetry and non-religious writing. Editions for readers often include vowel marks; the language itself doesn’t require them, and Torah scrolls don’t have vowel points.
• Both Hebrew and Arabic are written right to left.
• There’s shared slang between Hebrew and Arabic. Mabsuut, akhi.

For the Arabic speaker learning Hebrew, or the Hebrew speaker learning Arabic, there are a few things that make it easy to make the jump.

1. Adjective agreement and sentence structure. In both languages, adjectives usually come after the noun, and you repeat “the” on the adjective when describing a definite noun. So “the big house” becomes “the-house the-big”, while “the house is big” becomes “the-house big”, without a separate word for “is” in this kind of present-tense sentence.
2. A common concept of triliteral roots. Both languages use the related root k-t-b (كتب / כתב) for writing, though Hebrew often pronounces the final letter as “v”. Egyptian Arabic has katab (كتب, “he wrote”) and maktuub (مكتوب, “written”); Hebrew has katav (כתב) and katuv (כתוב) for the same meanings.
3. Many words have a shared history. Linguists call these words “cognates”: they developed from the same older word. There are plenty of them, but changes in sound and meaning mean you won’t always recognise them straight away.

For example, see the words below for a semi-random snapshot of similar words between Arabic and Hebrew:

The Arabic examples above use common Egyptian forms. Arabic Tari often means soft or tender, and can describe fresh food too. You’ll hear different versions in other dialects. The Hebrew numbers are the feminine counting forms; both languages change number forms depending on what you’re counting.

So far, so good, right? These familiar words give you a head-start, but following a conversation takes much more than recognising a few words.

Differences between Hebrew and Arabic (spoken)

Despite the similarities, the differences between Arabic and Hebrew are significant.

• Hebrew and Arabic handle the present tense differently. Hebrew has four forms, depending on whether the subject is masculine or feminine, singular or plural. The same form can cover “I”, “you” and “he” or “she”, whereas Arabic present-tense verbs also change for person.
• Arabic plurals can take more memorising. Some add predictable endings, while others change the vowels and shape of the word, like English “foot” becoming “feet”. These “broken plurals” follow recurring patterns, but I’d still learn each noun with its plural; Hebrew plurals have common endings too, along with plenty of exceptions.
• Arabic pronunciation may take more practice if you speak English. Most Arabic dialects use throat sounds that most speakers of modern Israeli Hebrew don’t distinguish. Hebrew pronunciation varied before its revival as an everyday language and still varies today: some speakers with Middle Eastern or North African family backgrounds preserve those sounds.
• Spoken Arabic differs more from its standard written form than Hebrew does. People usually use a local Arabic dialect in everyday conversation and Modern Standard Arabic in news, formal writing and much of education. Dialects have their own grammar, and people also write them, though spelling varies and there isn’t one universally accepted written standard for each dialect.

  Hebrew’s everyday spoken and written forms are closer, although formal writing still differs from conversation. Hebrew has a language academy, but speakers still borrow words and invent slang, just as Arabic speakers do.

• Egyptian Arabic can pack negation and an object pronoun around a verb. For example, “I didn’t see it” can become one word, mashuftuush, compared with Hebrew lo ra’iti oto. Some Levantine dialects use a similar pattern, but others use a separate negative word, and Hebrew also attaches some prepositions and pronouns to words.

A Persian speaker also gets a head-start with Arabic’s script and many borrowed words. A Hebrew speaker gets a different head-start through related grammar and word roots; how much either helps depends on what you already know and which kind of Arabic you’re learning.

If you speak Hebrew or Arabic, you already have some familiar grammar and word roots to build on when learning the other. You’ll still need to learn a new script, get used to different sounds, and practise understanding whole sentences.