It’s 2005 and I’ve landed a job as a language instructor in Amman, Jordan, at a prestigious Arab-American language learning academy. As soon as they told me I had the position and hung up the phone, I start thinking to myself that I should probably learn to speak Arabic a little before I leave America. After all, I’d be there for a year and would probably want to go out and...
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Most of you that have been studying the Arabic language, even if you’re just learning Arabic for beginners, have probably already learned the Arabic equivalent of the English Wh- question words. If you don’t remember, we’ve made this handy table to refresh your memory: English Transliteration Arabic who man ...
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If you’ve decided to learn Arabic online or in a classroom, you may have noticed that there seems to be a lot of regional dialects within the language, and you would be correct to notice that. Many Arabic speaking countries, and especially those of the Middle East and North Africa, speak different variants of the Arabic language and this is especially true in both Egypt...
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It’s that time of year when love is in the air in most Arabic-speaking countries and that can only mean one thing: If you met even a few Arab friends, you’re probably going to get a دعوة زفاف daʻwat zifaaf (wedding invitation) from at least one of them. So, to help you speak Arabic and feel a special part of the big day, we’re going...
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In a previous article, we discussed asking for and understanding questions related to giving directions in Arabic. Unlike cardinal numbers which are mostly used for counting, ordinal numbers are used to order things in a first-second-third kind of format and come in pretty handy when giving directions, especially in a busy city like Amman, Jordan, where they have numbered circles and you want to tell...
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It’s that time of the year again when wedding bells start ringing out all round the world. Well, that is, unless you live in the Arab world, where it’s that time of year when the zaghrootah (زغروتة) start trilling out throughout the region. “So, what is the zaghrootah?” you might ask. Well it’s a kind of ululation - a kind of a long, wavering, high-pitched shrill of...
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