On the “Learn with Zakaria – تَعَلَّمْ مَعَ زَكَرِيّا” channel on YouTube there are quite a few short instructional videos for children that can teach you some basic vocabulary. In this post I’ll talk a bit about the video about professions. If you’re a beginner, you’ll probably just want to do the first part of …
Category: advanced
The advanced category is for learners with a vocabulary of a 1,000 words or more and who can read Arabic script comfortably.
Online Arabic dictionaries
I am often asked what Arabic dictionaries I can recommend. In this article I will discuss four Arabic–English and/or English–Arabic online dictionaries, highlighting their advantages and drawbacks. Oxford Dictionaries Premium This is by far my fav♥rite online bilingual dictionary for Arabic and English. It is a paid subscription, but it only costs about $20 per …
Al-Manhal’s Arabic stories for children
The Al-Manhal publishing house has a large series of books for teaching Standard Arabic to children. The first “set” of books is intended for children 6 to 7 years of age, but some of them are also great beginning books for adult learners of Arabic. On YouTube you can also find videos in which the …
Miscellaneous easy conversation videos on YouTube
Elsewhere on this site I have written in detail about instructional videos on YouTube that expose you to elements of conversation: ArabicPod101’s “Arabic in three minutes” series. Shaykh Munaf’s Arabic conversations. I will use this article to post to list other such materials you may find useful. I will add to this list as I …
“Egypt is my mother” song (مصر هي أمّي)
In this post, I’m going to walk you through the refrain of a famous song by Afaf Radi (عفاف راضي ʕafaaf raaḍii). It’s a nationalistic song, and sung in Egptian Arabic rather than Standard Arabic, but it’s a well-known, singable song with some phrases in it that are easy for the beginning learner of Arabic. …
Nominative, genitive, accusative: Arabic’s three grammatical cases
You may know that Arabic has three grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, and accusative. There are two different issues at hand when discussing case. The first is what the different forms look like, and the second is what contexts are the different contexts they are used in. Let’s look at both of these very briefly. What …
All about يَشْرَب yashrab ‘to drink’
If you’re learner of Arabic, chances are you know the word يشرب yashrab ‘to drink’, even if you’re just a beginner. But there are some facts about this word you might not be aware of. Let’s a explore a bit, but first the basics. The basics about yashrab The present tense form of this verb …