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.

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.

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.

Practice the basics

8 questions, half of them spoken out loud. Free, no account needed.

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  • Structured Lessons: Follow comprehensive learning paths organized by modules and topics for Egyptian Arabic, Levantine, Moroccan Darija, and Modern Standard Arabic. Progress through lessons sequentially with progress tracking and unlock new content as you advance.
  • Multiple Arabic dialects: Egyptian, Levantine, Moroccan & Fusha
  • AI Tutor: Practice speaking with an AI tutor with real-time feedback
  • Spaced repetition system to remember words and sentences effectively
  • Interactive videos with transcripts, translations, and transliterations
  • Access to all stories and conversations with native audio
  • Unlimited sentence mining for all skill levels
  • Advanced speaking practice with real-time pronunciation feedback
  • Complete Arabic Alphabet mastery with native pronunciation
Have tried many of the 'apps' and this is the closest one to doing what I want! Very useful and comprehensive — I love the interlinear format for the stories.

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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.