About this app
This app can teach you to read and write basic Arabic. Scroll through the letters and study their shapes and sounds. Practice tracing each one until you're familiar-- then quiz yourself on the letters!
After familiarizing yourself with the letters, learn how to use the Harakaat (short vowel marks). Then, follow each lesson to learn how to use the new letters you've learned in common words. In the word games section, you can find word scramble and typing games to go along with each lesson to help you practice building words.
To start, you just need to know a few basic facts. 1) Arabic is written right-to-left. 2) Each letter has four forms: independent (on its own), initial (at the beginning of a word), medial (in the beginning of a word), and final (at the end of a word). They change shape slightly depending where they come in the word. 3) The dots above and below change the sound the letter makes. 4) Short vowel sounds are written as optional accent marks.
Arabic is a semitic language spoken across the Arab world which generally comprises the Middle East west of Iran and North Africa. It is the official language of 26 countries and 1 disputed territory -- making it the third most common official language after English and French. It is estimated to have 362 million native speakers and 274 million second-language speakers. That would make it the 6th most spoken language in the world.
While every Arab country teaches standard Arabic in school, in their daily lives people speak a dialect specific to the place they live. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is largely derived from Classical Arabic (CA), and both are commonly referred to as FusHa (فُصحى) meaning "The most elegant language." Local dialects are variously referred to as 3ammiyya or daarija (عامية أو دارجة) meaning "general speech" and "current speech" respectively. The term Darija is more common in North African countries west of Egypt. Specific dialects are typically called by the country or city they are specific to-- for example, Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) or just Egyptian, or Masry (مصري) which just means Egyptian in Arabic. At a more granular level, dialects within Egypt could be called Cairene, Alexandrian, Saidi (the southern region) etc. This can make learning Arabic seem like a daunting task -- what you should focus on largely depends on your learning goals. To be a truly competent Arabic speaker, one should study both MSA and the dialect of your choice. If you are only learning for the purposes of reading (literature, the news, religion), you may only want to learn FusHa. If you are learning to connect with family, planning a visit to a specific country, you may want to focus more on the dialect of that place. Dialects are mutually intelligible to a certain degree, especially between countries that are closer together. If you know standard Arabic and a dialect well, you should be able to easily communicate with most people. Regardless of your goals, learning the alphabet is a great starting point! The words and sentences in this app are Fus7a but should be useful to you in any case. There is still a great deal of overlap between Fus7a and dialects. The Arabic script is also used (currently and historically) for a huge number of other languages: Urdu, Farsi, Uyghur, Pashto, Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Balochi, Brahui, and many more.
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