Best Resources to Learn Levantine Arabic (Free/Paid)
This is our list of the best books, websites, tutor resources, and flashcard tools with which to learn Levantine Arabic as spoken in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
These are the resources that we recommend to learn Levantine Arabic (or to brush up).
Note: We earn a small commission from some of the links, at no cost to you (otherwise it just goes to Amazon). Please use them if you find this useful.
In this guide…
- The best books (which are all e-books) for learning Levantine Arabic
- Where to find the best online tutors for Levantine Arabic
- How to learn Levantine Arabic by repeating sentences
- Use Anki for flashcards (free)
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Contents
Quick Summary: Resources to Use to Learn Levantine Arabic
Without all the fluff, this is what we recommend if you want to learn Levantine Arabic.
- For beginners/those brushing up/adapting from another kind of Arabic: Colloquial Levantine Arabic by Routledge Books. It is an excellent and easy book to use, affordably priced, available as an eBook or physical book, and all the audio is online.
- To build a lot of vocabulary: Matthew Aldrich’s Levantine Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary. So many words, all with phonetic pronunciation, Arabic lettering, and even an audio guide to listen to every single word and sample sentence in your own time! He has lots of books; I also like his interviews with regular people speaking Levantine Arabic, which helps you talk about yourself (which we all do a lot), in Shwayy ‘an Haali.
- To find experienced teachers to speak with and book time with them without all the fuss of finding time with language partners, or going to schools: italki. Great teachers become our friends; we learn so much more than language.
- Use Pimsleur if you want to listen to Levantine Arabic and learn through voice prompts while driving in your car or going for a walk.
- Use Anki for spaced repetition flashcards. Any serious language learner uses Anki. It’s free. Here’s our guide to getting started with it. You can also buy some pretty good pre-made card Levantine Arabic decks for Anki (from Matthew Aldrich too).
More detail on all this below.
What do we know about learning Arabic?
Well, we know a lot as learners. Obviously not as authors or teachers. We owe everything we’ve learned to teachers, authors, and software makers who helped us learn quickly, so we want to share what was most effective.
We speak Arabic, and have studied both Levantine and Egyptian Arabic.
A word of caution: There are other websites that just list every language resource. Or just list whatever makes them money even if they don’t work. (For example, Rosetta Stone makes a bunch of money. But it’s no good for learning Arabic. I’ve met people who’ve used it, and they don’t speak Arabic.)
Some of the authors of those websites never even learned Arabic. Beware! We’re sharing experiences as people who’ve studied the language and tried the tools as serious language learners.
The Best Books for Learning Levantine Arabic
Books — especially electronic books that I can search on my computer — are my favourite way to get started with learning a language. I have consistently used books for many languages, now on my tenth (Korean).
A good introductory book that isn’t boring can totally transform the learning experience. My favourite series is the “Colloquial” series by Routledge publishing. I also like the “Teach Yourself” series, but they don’t cover as many languages in Arabic. For example, the Colloquial Arabic series includes separate books and audio for Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and Gulf Arabic.
The other thing I love about the “Colloquial” series is that all the audio is online, and you can download it as mp3s!
I also love all the books by Matthew Aldrich of Lingualism. He’s an old hand on Arabic language learning and has published guides I’d kill for in many other languages. All of the books he writes are useful, but the ones below are the most useful.
Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) by Mohammad al Masri
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Al-Masri, Mohammad (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 256 Pages - 08/27/2015 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
We really like the Colloquial Arabic book by Mohammad al Masri. Never mind that his name means “Mohammad the Egyptian”! The book is 100% about Levantine Arabic.
Like many books from the Colloquial series, it has a thematic approach with a gentle introduction to grammar that makes learning Arabic much easier.
The dialogues are interesting, and the audio (which you get online from the Routledge site, either to stream or download) is very clear.
Levantine Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary (Paperback and Kindle) by Matthew Aldrich
- Aldrich, Matthew (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 270 Pages - 01/22/2016 (Publication Date) - Lingualism (Publisher)
As Matthew says in his preface, knowing a language sometimes just feels like knowing a lot of words, and knowing them REALLY well.
That’s why I love his vocabulary books. I also love it how he’s made thematic Anki decks for all of them! Grab the books first, start listening to the audio, and if you like them, get the Anki decks from his site (Lingualism).
He also has awesome resources for Egyptian Arabic, a few other varieties of Arabic, and some he’s producing on Russian.
Shwayy ‘an Haali (Paperback and Kindle) by Matthew Aldrich
- Aldrich, Matthew (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 196 Pages - 01/06/2018 (Publication Date) - Lingualism (Publisher)
I could keep recommending books by Matthew but I’ll stop here… his book Shwayy ‘an Haali (“a little about myself”), like his Egyptian Arabic book Shwayy ‘an Nafsi (same meaning), is a really interesting way to learn how to speak about yourself.
It’s a whole bunch of conversations, done in an interview style. You’ll hear people of different ages, genders, and backgrounds, talking about who they are, their names, where they’re from, what they like to do, and expressing basic opinions.
The reality of language learning is we often have the same conversations over and over again. Where are you from? Where did you learn Arabic? How long have you been learning? Do you like football? And so on.
Very occasionally we’ll go much deeper, and that’s where teachers and advanced courses shine.
To practise basic conversations books like Shwayy ‘an Haali really shine. I wish books like this existed in more languages.
Best place to find Levantine Arabic Tutors Online: italki
We’ve tried a few ways of finding tutors online, and still like italki the best. (We also occasionally have in-person tutors, but it’s not great.)
It’s just so convenient. Find a well-regarded teacher with lots of reviews and a face you like, book a time and pay.
Get $5 in italki credits — enough for a trial class!
Get a tutor online for as little as $4/lesson from italki with $5 in credits after your first purchase of $20 of credits.
My favourite thing is how finding a tutor on italki is like speed dating. People want to impress you.
Occasionally we’ve stayed with a teacher in a country, and then within 5 minutes we know “this guy talks too much”, “this person is a terrible teacher” or even just “I don’t like this person”. It’s so frustrating. That rarely happens on italki, and if it does… we just don’t book another lesson. Easy!
And our best teachers become our friends, people I’m glad to have spoken to, and know well. We even meet some in real life if we’re lucky.
Sure it’s a few too many clicks, but it’s wonderful that people just show up on Skype at the appointed time.
Sign up here for $5 credit for your first lesson (with your first purchase of credits). Lessons are usually $5-15 (or more, but don’t spend more than that).
Note, the cheaper teachers can be great, and more expensive ones aren’t necessarily better. If you want more info on how to get the most out of italki, read our complete review of italki here.
The Best App for Levantine Arabic — Pimsleur
Back in the early 2000s, I first used Pimsleur to learn Levantine Arabic (or Eastern Arabic as it’s called in the app).
To this day, they’re one of the only online resources for Levantine Arabic that exists. So it’s hard to not recommend them.
Pimsleur won’t get you “fluent”. But it does help you
- Build up a good and highly useful phrase bank
- Develop a clear understanding of pronunciation — from very clear pronunciation
- Learn the basics intuitively, assembling phrases from the spoken prompts
Pimsleur is great for listening to and studying from while going on walks or while driving. I still like it. You can try it for a week for free and see if you do, too.
Try Pimsleur for Free
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What to avoid — Bad resources for learning Arabic
We’ve tried lots of websites and different software. Here’s what we don’t like:
- Duolingo for Arabic: It’s only useful for learning the basic letters. Do not use it past that point. Note that Duolingo only has Modern Standard Arabic
- Memrise for Arabic: same as Duolingo. Only useful for basic letters. Past that point, you’ll learn ineffectively and sometimes outdated or incorrect things
- Most online courses: With respect to the creators, we haven’t found any other than Rocket Languages that are as useful as a teacher and books. We’ve tried Mango, Rocket Languages, LearnLanguages101 courses, and TalkinArabic. While we could easily recommend a bunch and make money off selling them, we’d prefer that you spend less money and get more out of the resources above.
What is “Levantine Arabic”?
Levantine Arabic is the kind of Arabic spoken in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan.
The best reason to decide to learn Levantine Arabic is if you have a specific interest in the Levant — Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
Levantine Arabic is also known as
- Palestinian Arabic (referring to the people)
- Lebanese Arabic
- Jordanian Arabic
It’s also the kind of Arabic spoken by the Arab population of Israel (or “that part of the world“) and the occupied territories of Palestine.
Levantine Arabic obviously varies a little between those regions, but it’s a colloquial variation — like the difference in French between France and Switzerland, for example. In fact, probably less. It’s nearly entirely mutually intelligible, except when things get very local and people use very slangy words.
Levantine Arabic is also mostly mutually intelligible with Egyptian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic.
It gets a little harder if you’re from the Peninsula or other Gulf states, and a lot harder if you’re speaking to someone from North Africa.
Hello Dana! Your blog is very knowledgeable. I am very happy to read these amazing books to learn the Arabic language. Thanks for giving us this educational information. Keep writing!
Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian are the most widely understood dialects in the Arab world. This is thanks to television and cinema. Their own prolifically produced popular films and/or soaps, along with those dubbed from other languages into Lebanese and Syrian and widely distributed, have further enhanced these three dialects’ exposure. Lebanese and Egyptian songs are also the most extensively listened to. The Lebanese dialect (which belongs to the Levantine family of dialects, spoken also in Jordan, Palestine and Syria) is taught in this book alongside MSA.
Try “Arabic Express: Speak Lebanese. A Complete course.”
It’s comprehensive and user friendly.
Thank you for all the info in this post and on your website about learning Arabic! Arabic is not one of the most popular languages among polyglots and it’s not easy to find recommendations about how to tackle this unique language family. I’m studying Levantine Arabic but I’ve found that it’s important to choose a sub-dialect or at least choose Northern or Southern Levantine. The verb conjugations and corresponding pronunciation vary enough to create a lot of confusion and frustration when you’re trying to talk to friends from different countries in this region. I’m so glad that Lingualism has started… Read more »
I am looking for a course with audio but the text in the book should be in arabic script not latin script (Colloquial Arabic (Levantine) by Mohammad al Masri uses latin script)
I agree, those are thin on the ground. Look into Lingualism’s books, there’s more and more on Levantine Arabic there.