Twenty Arabic Dialects - Vocab

Practice vocabulary and sentences that demonstrate a wide range of grammatical structures using our fun quiz game and our sentence scramble game! The sentence scramble game uses a repetition-spacing algorithm for quick familiarization with new sentences.

This app is probably best for intermediate and advanced Arabic learners who have a solid foundation and would like some supplementary exposure to different dialects. Some learners may be dismayed to find that all of our sentences and vocabulary are transliterated; however, the transliteration serves to disambiguate important phonological patterns crucial to the acquisition of a new dialect which are obscured by the Arabic script. That being said, we recognize the importance of practicing reading in the Arabic script and are working on a similar multi-dialectal project that will use the Arabic script... stay tuned!

You can use this app to learn any of the twenty Arabic dialects presented.

Linguistic data was collected from native speakers from 20 different locations throughout the Arabophone world. They are:

Sudanese Arabic (al-Khartoum)

Algerian Arabic (Oum el Bouaghi)

Egyptian Arabic (Cairo and Fayoum)

Iranian Arabic (Ahwaz)

Iraqi Arabic (Baghdad and Basra)

Jordanian Arabic (Karak)

Kuwaiti Arabic (Kuwait City)

Lebanese Arabic (Nabatiya)

Libyan Arabic (Sabha)

Moroccan Arabic (Meknes)

Omani Arabic (Salalah)

Palestinian Arabic (Tul Karim)

Saudi Arabic (Jedda, Riyadh)

Syrian Arabic (Aleppo, Damascus, and Daraa)

Yemeni Arabic (Marib)

The data was transcribed by linguists to capture the exact pronunciation, capturing the fine details which differentiate one dialect from another.

Transcription symbol Arabic script Phonetic value

a َ æ ~ a (as in "father", or as in "as")

ā ا æː ~ aː

e e ~ ɛ (as in elephant)

ē eː ~ ɛː

i ِ i

ī ي iː (as in eat)

ō oː

u ُ u

ū و uː

ǝ ǝ

aw و aw

ay ي aj

b ب b

f ف f

t ت t

ṭ ط tˤ

d د d

ḍ ض dˤ

θ ث θ (as the th in "thin")

ð ذ ð (as the th in "this)

ð̣ ظ, ض ðˤ (in dialects where Daad is pronounced interdentally)

k ق , ك k (in some dialects qaaf is pronounced kaaf)

g ﺝ, ﻕ, گ, ڨ g

x خ x

ġ غ ɣ

q ق q

ʔ ء, ق ʔ (in some dialects qaaf is pronounced like a hamza)

s س s

ṣ ص sˤ

z ز z

ẓ ظ zˤ

š ش ʃ (like the sh in "share")

ž ژ ʒ (like the s in "measure")

č چ ʧ (like the ch in "chair")

j ج ʤ (like the j in "justice)

m م m

n ن n

l ل l

ḷ ل ɫ (emphatic l, like in allah)

r ر r

w و w

y ي j (like the y in "yell")

h ه h

ʕ ع ʕ

ḥ ح ħ

Data credited to Matras, Y. et al. 2017. Database of Arabic Dialects. The University of Manchester. http://www.arabic.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/database-of-arabic-dialects/