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Studies in Islam: Arabic Language

Arabic Language Learning Links

Here are some links to websites with free information on Arabic, and also media sources with free content that can help you practice Arabic

Journal

WordReference Arabic Resources page - includes many useful links

Free FSI courses - for standard Arabic, Levantine and Saudi dialects, and comparative studies of different dialects

NMELRC Arabic Learner's Handbook (PDF, 141 KB) - general information and tips on the learning process

V-Arabic - Virtual Arabic blog with digitized language realia resources for Arabic learners & teachers

Arabic Corpus - a searchable Arabic corpus; great for seeing the contexts in which words are commonly used

Yamli - type and do searches in transliterated Arabic, and the site will "translate" back into Arabic script

MEMRI TV - news video clips with English translations

The Arabic Student blog - contains Arabic videos with transcripts and vocabulary

Learn Arabic Language website - a great resource with lots of Arabic textbooks and learning materials for download

GLOSS learning materials - do a search for Arabic, and you'll find lots of lessons based on authentic materials, on different topics, with several activities per lesson.

Weekly training events - again, search for Arabic, and you'll find more lessons with authentic media and activities, on a variety of topics.

CultureTalk - features videos by native Arabic speakers from the Levant, Egypt, North Africa, Western Sahara, and Yemen. Speakers discuss a variety of cultural topics, mostly in Arabic, and transcripts and translations are included.

Mo3jam - a user-generated dictionary of colloquial Arabic slang, similar to Urban Dictionary but much more limited.

Arabic Online from Western Michigan University - a set of instructional units with authentic texts and audio/video excerpts with self-graded comprehension questions. There are three units: Advanced Standard Arabic I, Advanced Standard Arabic II, and Advanced Egyptian Arabic I.

Arabic Variant Identification Aid - an informative website focusing on the urban Arabic dialects spoken in the United Arab Emirates, Jidda (Hijaz, Saudi Arabia), Jerusalem (Palestinian Arabic), Baghdad (Iraq), Kuwait, Qatar and Sanca (Yemen)

Foreigncy - Arabic news articles with vocabulary

The Arabic alphabet

Online Arabic reading course - teaches the alphabet

Learning the Arabic script, from Stanford

Arabic alphabet tutorial

Grammar

A Hundred and One Rules! A reference grammar for novice and intermediate Arabic students created by Professor Mohammed Jiyad of Mount Holyoke College

Acon: Free verb conjugator

Al Masdar: It is a searchable database for all things Arabic. You can also upload and share your own resources!

Arabic Study Circle: Online lessons for Arabic language learning.

Falooka: Free and premium grammar lessons, podcasts, and interactive dialogues

Fun with Arabic: This site includes an alphabet lesson with a catchy song, some grammar lessons, an online quiz and many external links.

GLOSS:  The Global Online Language Support System is a service run by the U.S. Department of Defense and features comprehensive online language support for learners of various critical languages. It includes audios and lesson plans

Learn Arabic Online: This website contains a large and ever-growing repository of tutorials on the Arabic language. Here you can learn to read Arabic, write Arabic, learn Arabic numbers, learn to conjugate Arabic verbs, delve into Arabic grammar, and much more.

Speak7:  Includes the Arabic alphabet and basic grammar lessons

Ya Beyrouth:  Articles about Arabic, poetic wonders, lists of common errors, and more (for advanced classes)

Vocabulary and Flashcards

•   Al-Jazeera Learning Arabic: This is an Arabic language learning tool launched by Qatar-based news outlet Al-Jazeera.

•   Anki: Interactive flashcard program. Use with text, audio, video, or images. Can keep track of how well you’re remembering different cards. Create multiple decks of flashcards. 

•   Arabic Class:  vocabulary lists with pictures

•   Aswaat Arabiya: Aswaat cArabiyya provides listening materials and accompanying activities that are intended for the various levels of proficiency from Novice to Superior. These listening materials have been selected from television stations throughout the Arab world and they treat a wide variety of topics and listening genres.

•   Busuu: Vocabulary, listening, and reading exercises. Ability to practice with native speakers/other learners. Goal-setting, printable PDFs, rewards. Very correct pronunciation (including all the case endings).

•   Digital Dialects:  Interactive games to learn basic vocabulary

•   Jordanian Arabic: Lists of basic items with audios.

•   Language Courses: Comparative courses between (Eastern and Western Arabic) and (Levantine and Egyptian Arabic)

•   Lingnet:  A collection of over 300 causal phone conversations in non-standard dialects on a variety of topics and at different difficulty levels; features Egyptian, Iraqi and Levantine conversations as well as corresponding lesson plans

•   Lingua.ly: It is a vocabulary tool that helps users learn words while browsing the web. Double-click on a word once this Chrome extension is installed, and Lingua.ly both translates words and begins compiling a word collection.

•   Mastering Arabic: On this site you’ll find a range of learning support materials, including audio flashcards, PowerPoint presentations and printable exercise sheets.

•   Memrise: It is an online learning tool with courses for many languages created by its community. Memrise uses flashcards augmented with mnemonics—partly gathered through crowdsourcing—and the spacing effect to boost the speed and ease of learning.

•   Omniglot: Details of written and spoken Arabic, including the Arabic alphabet and pronunciation

•   Oxford First Arabic Words book: Interactive site for the Oxford First Arabic Words book. Hear words pronounced as you put cursor over writing next to picture – good for reading practice and learning new everyday vocabulary

•   Read Arabic: The materials in this website were developed to provide online e-learning reading lessons aimed at beginning and intermediate students of the language.

•   The Arabic Student: Collection of Arabic media collected by an American student of Arabic to help intermediate to advanced students with mainly dialects

Reading

•   Adab: Online collection of thousands of Arabic poems, available in both Arabic and English.

•   Arabic Online: Resource page for multimedia Arabic learning materials, combining authentic texts and audio/video excerpts with self-graded comprehension questions for Advanced students of Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic.

•   Children’s Library (Arabic): A selection of children’s literature in Arabic available online for free.

•   Nizariat: A collection of poetry and prose from Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, as well as information on Qabbani himself.

•   Princeton Online Poetry Project: Small collection of translated Arabic poems with the option of listening to poems read by a native speaker.

•   Read Arabic!: Modern Standard Arabic reading materials developed by the US Department of Education; reading lessons aimed at beginner and intermediate students.

                   

More Links of Arabic Language Resources

Culture

Arabic Culture through Literature and Film:  you can find five unit high school curriculum that provides students with knowledge and tools to analyze and understand the Arab world. The materials utilize a student-centered pedagogical approach that promotes critical thinking and respect and encourages engaged global citizenship.

 Arabic Multimedia collection: It is an online resource with interactive learning and playing applications to further educators’ and students’ understanding and appreciation of the Arabic language, arts, culture, music and history (this blog can only be viewed by registered users of St. Lawrence University)

Arabic Without Walls: Arabic Without Walls contains materials for three separate components broken down under the Course Content into Al-Kitaab, Interviews, and Culture. While each component may stand by itself and therefore may be studied independently, the three are designed to complement each other in Arabic Without Walls

Friends of Morocco:  Lessons in Moroccan Arabic

LangMedia: Collection of videos (can be used in elementary and intermediate courses)

Legends & Folktales: a great website for folklore & legends from around the world - some pieces are in Arabic (subtitled!) and in English as well.

Music Layoonak: The largest Arabic music blog, with over 800 songs from over 175 artists from all over the Arabic-speaking world in translation.

Standard Arabic

AI Jazeera Arabic Resources 

A Hundred and One Grammar Rules by Mohammed Jiyad - a short reference grammar for beginning and intermediate learners

ArabicOnline.eu - has an online beginner course in Arabic

Arabic Conversation Video - created by Kanan Al-Ali, Instructor of SI101, showing daily converesation, introductions in addition to counting up to ten.

Arabic for beginners

Arabic grammar reference

Arabic grammar resources - a categorized database of grammar information

Babel online beginner Arabic course

BBC Arabic Resources 

Virtual Arabic Keyboard

Learn Arabic-EU Project

Learn Arabic Language

Learn Arabic Language with Maha

Madinah online course focusing on Arabic grammar

Read Arabic! - reading practice materials in standard Arabic, on novice and intermediate levels. The texts are accompanied by additional materials such as audio, notes, translation, and a glossary.

Written Arabic

Arabic dialetics

Arabic - SurvivalPhrases

Levantine Arabic

Saudi Arabic

Egyptian Arabic

DLI course in Egyptian Arabic - includes both PDF lessons and audio.

BYU Arabic course materials - Online vocabulary, exercises, and videos for both Egyptian and standard Arabic (beginner level).

CultureTalk Egypt - A great collection of videos, including transcripts and translations, on a variety of cultural topics.

An Arabist's Guide to Egyptian Colloquial by Daniel Pipes (PDF, 8 MB) - Written for Arabic students with a background in standard Arabic, this is a good introduction to the Egyptian dialect.

Egyptian Arabic Dialect Course - a series of 15 lessons using songs to teach vocabulary and grammar.

Lisaan Masry - has a dictionary and a grammar introduction.

TalkEgypt - a collection of Arabic movies, TV, and music videos that have subtitles.

An Introduction to Egyptian Arabic by Ernest T. Abdel-Massih

A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic, Vol. 1: Conversations, Cultural Texts, and Sociolinguistic Notes by Ernest T. Abdel-Massih

A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic, Vol. 2: Proverbs and Metaphoric Expressions by Ernest T. Abdel-Massih

A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic, Vol. 3: A Reference Grammar of Egyptian Arabic by Ernest T. Abdel-Massih

A Comprehensive Study of Egyptian Arabic, Vol. 4: Arabic-English and English-Arabic Lexicon by Ernest T. Abdel-Massih

Egyptian Arabic Primer by W.A. Betts, available to browse or as a free PDF download from Google Books. Note that it was published in 1902, so some of the content (vocabulary like "wabuur/babuur" for train; "Hakiim" for doctor; "mara" for woman; and so on) is outdated, but it's interesting as a historical document.

An Arabic-English Vocabulary of the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt by Socrates Spiro, from Google Books. This book is old too (pub. 1895), but is nonetheless also interesting as a historical document.

Levantine Arabic

CultureTalk Arab Levant - video clips of interviews and discussions with Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, and Jordanians. Most of the clips are in colloquial Arabic, some are in English. Translations are given for all non-English video clips.

Colloquial Levantine audio and video collection - audio, video, and sample syllabi for learning everyday Arabic as spoken by Jordanians, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians.

Other Arabic Languages

Syrian Arabic

Syrian Arabic textbook - used to be free; now costs $45 for the PDF and mp3s

Lebanese Arabic

ABC Lebanese Arabic

Jordanian Arabic

LangMedia: Arabic in Jordan - lots of videos (with transcripts and translations) arranged by theme

Moroccan Arabic

Speak Moroccan - some basic grammar and a bunch of vocabulary

Revised Peace Corps Moroccan Arabic book, available for download as a PDF file

Tunisian Arabic

Peace Corps Tunisian Arabic book (PDF, 10.9 MB)

Tunisian Arabic course (PDF, 3.55 MB)

Mauritanian Arabic

Mauritanian Arabic: Culture and Communication (PDF, 5.53 MB)

Mauritanian Arabic: Grammar (PDF, 1.4 MB)

Mauritanian Arabic: Literacy (PDF, 1.56 MB)

Gulf Arabic

Gulf Arabic.com (free registration required)

Online Dictionaries

Lisaan Masry: A searchable (in both Arabic and English) dictionary of Egyptian Arabic.

Al Maany - Arabic-English, English-Arabic

Aratools - Arabic-English

WordReference - English-Arabic

Ectaco - English-Arabic

Fuzzy Arabic Dictionary - an Arabic-English dictionary allowing you to look up words without knowing their exact Arabic spelling