Learn Levantine Arabic الشامي
The Arabic of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine — often the first dialect learners find easy to listen to.
Lessons
Structured lessons covering greetings, family, food, travel and more.
Phrases
How to say hello, thank you, happy birthday and the rest, with audio and the forms for a man, a woman or a group.
Common Words
The words you meet most often, each with audio and real example sentences from our stories.
Stories
Read and listen to Levantine Arabic stories with translation and a vocabulary glossary.
Vocabulary
Search the word database, hear each word, and save it to your review deck.
Start Here
How to learn Levantine Arabic: what to do first, which accent to pick, and how long each stage takes.
Verb Conjugations
Full conjugation tables for 72 common verbs, every tense, affirmative and negative.
Conversation Practice
Talk to the AI tutor in Levantine Arabic and get corrections as you go.
Where Levantine Arabic is spoken
Spoken by roughly 40 million people across Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, and by large diaspora communities. Syrian and Lebanese television has made it the second most widely recognised dialect after Egyptian.
What makes Levantine Arabic different
marhaba and keefak
The everyday greeting is marhaba, answered with marhabtayn ("two hellos"). "How are you" is keefak to a man and keefik to a woman — the endings do the work that separate words do in English.
ق is a glottal stop in the cities
In Damascus, Beirut and Amman, qalb (heart) is said as albe. Rural and Druze varieties keep the q, and Bedouin varieties turn it into a g.
The future uses rah or ha-
rah rooh or harooh both mean "I will go". This is one of the clearest splits from Egyptian, which uses ha- exclusively.
Imaala bends the long a
In much of Lebanon and northern Syria the long a leans towards an e sound, so baab (door) comes out closer to beeb. It is a large part of what people mean when they call Levantine melodic.
How Levantine Arabic compares
Practice the basics
8 questions, half of them spoken out loud. Free, no account needed.
Common questions
Is Levantine Arabic one dialect or several?
Several closely related ones. Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Palestinian Arabic differ in accent and some vocabulary, but speakers understand each other without difficulty. Material taught as "Levantine" is usually based on Damascus or Beirut speech.
How do you say hello in Levantine Arabic?
marhaba (مرحبا) is the standard greeting and works in any situation. as-salamu 3alaykum is more formal or traditional, and ahlan or hay are casual.
Is Levantine harder than Egyptian Arabic?
Not harder, but there is less learning material and less media exposure, so it can take more effort to find good listening practice. The grammar is very close to Egyptian.