By Nezha Almahi-LeBrasseur

A Breakdown of How to Speak Correctly, Understand, and be Understood by Arabic Speakers

1. Learn How to Pronounce Arabic Correctly from the Start

When students call to take Arabic lessons with me, I ask them to write two paragraphs in Arabic to assess their level. When I receive some students’ paragraphs, I classify them as advanced. However, once I speak to them on the phone, guess which level a lot of them really classify as...beginner! 

Why? Because many students learned all their words incorrectly. You can know all the words in the dictionary, but if you don’t learn the correct pronunciation, no Arabic speaker will be able to understand you. It is a mistake that many students make. But the good news is that it can be easily avoided!

• Arabic pronunciation is straightforward, consistent, logical, and has rules.

In English, some letters and letter pairings, such as “gh” could be pronounced as an “f” in the word laugh, as a hard “G” in the word “ghost” and not pronounced at all in “though.”

Arabic pronunciation, however, has more logical rules. Thus, once you learn these rules, you will be able to pronounce any Arabic word with vowels correctly! 

2. When learning the alphabet, make sure to learn the few different ways of pronouncing certain letters in different dialects

• There are six letters that could be pronounced differently depending on the dialect.

Example: The letter   ث is pronounced as “th” as in three, or as a regular “t” as in tree, or as an “s” in so. Knowing this helps you understand all Arabic speakers once you learn the language. 

3. Choose the version of Arabic that fulfills your needs

Before starting your Arabic learning, you need to know which version of Arabic you should learn to achieve your own goals. There are many versions of Arabic. For example, if you are traveling to a certain country, make sure to learn the dialect which is spoken there, and not the dialect of another country or region. Still not sure which one you need? Here is a video to help you decide!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfqFIdaPYguGUOkCwyappiQ?view_as=subscriber

4. Make sure you learn from professional teachers who are preferably native speakers

• Some professional, well trained, and knowledgeable teachers are better than native speakers who have no knowledge and no methodology in teaching languages 

I am not talking about non-native professors/teachers who studied the language profoundly and are well trained to deliver great lessons. 

However, beware the YouTubers with bad pronunciation and bad information. Protect yourself from great marketers who are not professional Arabic teachers and who do not even have any knowledge about their own language, except for speaking it. You can avoid this trap by doing your research or reaching out to the teacher directly to get to know their background a bit better.

5. Learn from organized material, especially courses that use the spiral method

Good courses will teach you one topic at a time, instead of teaching random words here and there. Since languages differ in sentence structure, learning words will not help you master the language. You cannot translate sentences from English into Arabic word for word. After you learn how to make a sentence, you can add vocabulary to that sentence. 

Let’s look at this sentence as an example: “I am American.”

In Arabic, we say, “Anaa Amreekee” (if a male is speaking): 

  أَنَا أَمْرِيكِي 

This sentence actually translates word for word into “I American,” since the verb “to be” is not used in this case.

Now that you know this sentence structure, you can easily use it with the words for other nationalities, which you will learn.

6. Immerse yourself in Arabic every day by:

• Listening to Arabic music

There are plenty of songs on YouTube that have lyric subtitles. The brain is really good at retaining languages when accompanied by music, so this is a great method to use! Also, make sure to choose music that you like! This will allow you to have fun, and your brain will better retain what you hear (as opposed to listening to a song you do not care for).

• Watching Arabic shows, soap operas, movies, plays, and/or documentaries, especially with Arabic and English subtitles, helps at ton at the beginning of your Arabic learning journey. You can get tons of recommendations from Al Fusaic’s recommendations section!

• If you are studying Formal Arabic (called Modern Standard Arabic), you can read or watch Arabic stories. Stories you are familiar with, such as “Aladdin” for example, are perfect for this!

7. Listening to Arabic before bedtime

Listening to Arabic before bedtime is also a great way to learn. Studies suggest that the brain retains information the best when learning it shortly before going to bed. This is because when we go to sleep, our subconscious mind goes to work and stores this material.