Arabic and Hebrew: Why Semitic Languages Are Not Difficult

I appreciate your nice explanation about the Semitic languages. Indeed they are easy to learn. I am From Ethiopia, an Amharic speaker, and curious to learn Arabic.

I dabbled in arabic some ten years (MSA and lebanese dialect) and tried to learn both Amharic and Tigrinya. Right now Tigrinya is the language I am strongest even though I think it is the hardest for a native English or German (what I am) speaker. Maybe MSA is on the same level or even harder. I cannot tell since I did not learn enough of MSA to compare. The arabic alphabet maybe easier to learn in the beginning, but I really did not have any problems to learn either of the alphabets. The Geez alphabet has a big advantage though and that is that you can really read all the words after you know it, unlike the arabic script where vowels are not really written. At least the arabic dialects seem easier than both Tigrinya and Amharic in the oral though (I dont relly have a problem pronouncing those sounds that are deemed as hard by English native speakers), mainly because of the sentence structure which I find more strange in Tigrinya and Amharic. Concerning ressources I think it is getting better now, but the one with the least ressources available for is probably Tigrinya even though some arabic dialects may also have few ressources, depeding which one. I have a German friend who studied Tigrinya previously and now does MSA. He is now on a B2 level in MSA and says that it is much easier than Tigrinya, but he mainly attributes this due to the lack of learning ressources for Tigrinya.

Well, learning Amharic isn’t hard if you have already learned to speak it but most people jump into a new language by learning to read and write at the same time causing many problems. Additionally, the English alphabet can’t be translated to Amharic effectively. That means it is hard to learn the Amharic alphabet via association to the English alphabet. Lastly, Amharic contains many letters that are pronounced in such ways that English could never explain. The only reason I learned it is because it is my native language and since I learned it as it’s own language. Not as a language associated with English.

I am leul a native Amharic speaker, a decent English speaker(B2-C1 level) and a beginner in Spanish and Korean.
In the near future I plan to learn Arabic since, it is such a beautiful language.
Coming to your question or statement: I think Amharic is easier than Arabic. But, maybe since I am a native speaker I don’t think I have the right to say this, so I will only state facts about my language. First of Amharic has letters, approximately 150, which is a lot compared to Arabic which is basically 28 I guess. And I guess that makes it a bit intimidating for learners according to my portugese speaking friends. Honestly, let me mention a funny fact though English is my second language I prefer writing and reading in English rather than my native Amharic language. In terms of speaking and listening, I can easily engage in them in both languages.
And the new generation here have a hard time writing in Amharic, since the letters are a bit hard to write, but not as hard as Chinese Characters, but not as easy as Korean ‘Hangul’.
As I have noticed foreigners, most of them if not all have a hard time getting their pronunciation right! It is like if you don’t pick it up as a child, it will take you a very long time to be fluent ‘people will always catch you on your wrong pronunciation and intonation’ but, maybe it is because people give up easily on Amharic than on other languages.
The great thing though is it is not a tonal Language. But, there are soft and hard sounds that make a difference in meaning like in spanish ‘pero and perro.’
The not so great part is that ‘you will never find a good resource to study with’ it is very rare to come up on a good resource.
The thing I would recommend for new learners is that ‘Learn the letters’. Never use latin to write Amharic ‘it is the worst thing you can ever do’. Take time and learn the letters and memorize the sounds for the letters. And that is a big step to having Amharic within your grasp.

I am a native Hebrew speaker and Hebrew is not an easy language at all. The grammar is very complicated. You have mentioned only the easy things about the Semitic languages grammar and not the difficult things about it, such as “buildings” (בניינים), ganders, name of number, and Hebrew is not a phonetic language - many words aren’t written as they sound, and in Herbrew there are two writing systems: formal and hand - writing (דפוס, כתב). On top of all, everything is unusual. The pronunciation of Hebrew and Arabic is hard and it is not as easy as you say to learn the mew consonants, and the vowels (a e i u o) are not pronounced the same as they are pronounced in many European languages. Also, in Hebrew, stress can change the meaning of the word. For example, the words eat and food (“okhel”), are pronounced the same in Hebrew accept for the stress: in the word food, (אוכל), the stress is on the first syllable (O-khel), and in the word eat (אוכל), the stress is on the last syllable(o-KHEL).
I am not saying that Semitic languages are the hardest languages in the world; I am just saying that you make Semitic languages look easy, but they are not easy at all, in fact they are very difficult and many things are complicated about Semitic languages.

He doesnt soy that Hebrew and Arabic are not hard.The only thing which he says is that the languages are not so difficult as seem or as many people think.It does not mean that he thinks the languages are easy !!!.Anyway ,the difficulty of a language does not to have an excuse for not learning a language.That has to be a motivation.))) And bah,on the other hand ,many people say and think Spanish is very easy to learn ,and at the same time,their grammar is not correct,and they make a lot of grammatical mistakes. That is very curious.When we speak about languages ,all is relative.)))

The article cited related to ‘Arabic is hard for the brain to read’ was flawed.

Thank you for the detailed information. Right now I need to learn Arabic to read the Quran. Perhaps later I will also want to read poetry. How would you recommend to start?

Do You Mean Modern Standard Arabic Learners Cant Talk To Native Arabs :’(

I do speak tigrigna ( Eritrean) and amharic( Ethiopia)
It’s not that difficult to learn Arabic specially if you can speak tigrigna.
I have a lot of friends who speakes Arabic and I can understand them what they say but I can’t speak it.
Tigrigna and Arabic are 20% similar.
Specially.....
To boy -Ka
To girl-Ki
To many people- Kum
That’s so awesome.
I’m glad I speak tigrigna.

Growing up on the US-Mexico border, I spent a lot of time around Spanish and took 6 years of Spanish in grade school. I found learning Arabic to be much easier after learning Spanish. The concept of conjugation in Arabic was a no-brainer after learning Spanish, you just change the front instead of the end of the word. Too easy. The roots are extremely helpful in understanding conversation through context as well.

I’m jumping back into studying Arabic now and hope to begin Hebrew soon!

Interesting - although a biased article

While I do not speak Amharic I do speak Tigrinya, a language which, like Amharic, uses Ge’ez script, and though I can’t gauge the difficulty of learning Tigrinya (I grew up with my parnts speaking it to me), I did learn to read Ge’ez when I was sixteen and, being literate in Arabic, I can say with confidence that Ge’ez is the easier of the two. The Arabic script, which rests on “implied vowels” simply makes it impossible for me to read in any language that uses it that I don’t know. Ge’ez on the other hand is an Abugida, a much more common type of writing system than the infamous Abjad. Since the vowels are affixed to the consonants there is no vowel sound ambiguity and, ergo, I can potentially read any language that uses Ge’ez (from a phonetic standpoint) before ever even looking at it.

Arabic has so many rules, which in my opinion makes it easier to learn. Let he who doesnt know much say not a thing about it. This is for those who say its hard while they almost dont even know a thing yet. The difficulty of the language is subjective, so it could just be (and probably is) a not-so-wise-talking-before-doing-anything kind of guy who claims arabic to be a tough to learn language. The only beneficial advice i can give on this imo is to tell you to stop caring about what the people say about a language, and have an open mind about it. My native language is turkish, i have somehow got to learn english, and arabic, and now im starting to learn hebrew. My list has spanish and maybe japanese in it. Why should i care what the people say, they have their brains, i have mine, we’re not the same.
And could the writer please use the hamzah when it is necessary? There is علم (he knew) and there is the present of it which is conjugated for the pronoun ‘I’ which is أعلم (i know). And there is the verb تعلّم (he learned) and there is the present version conjugated for ‘I’ which is أتعلّم (i’m learning). Notice that i’ve typed أعلم and not اعلم.

”Let he who doesnt know much say not a thing about it”

Thank you for this, I really enjoyed it

Amharic languge is fun to learn. the hardest part is i think fidel. we have a lot of words. the more you know the word the more easiser to master it.

Arabic despite teh hype of it being difficult I learned quite quickly. Of course i Had teh motivation of going to the International Criminal Court and It is an important language to learn in relation to the Darfur conflict(which i and the ICC call genocide) Once I began to understand the patterns of the three core letters It was easy

Thanks for this very much. My wife is Lebanese and I’ve been slowly trying to learn Levatine Arabic (I already knew some egyptian/standard arabic from working with exchange officers from Egypt and Kuwait), and this quick overview really helped put things in perspective.

Amharic may not be as hard as arabic and hebrew but it doesnot mean it is not hard.There are some pronounciations that you have heard before that takes a lot of practicing to master it.so when you first start talking amharic it will sound like a little baby trying to speak but then you will get better.But you will never be able to speak like the native speakers.

the best thing in Amharic is no matter how your dialect is ugly the locals love it and understand it well. that is what makes amharic easy.

shortly one is not responsible to pronounce letters correctly and the way they make sentence is as every one want to make. no Ethiopian man {those who speak Amharic as first language } say “ i do not understand you “ “ what did you say “ when foreigners talk to him. just talk to him he will understand you.
but when it comes to write you must write it well otherwise none can read it.

The Ge’ez alphabet which is used in Amharic and Tigrigna is much easier than the Hebrew one if you pay attention to its structure. Some Hebrew letters are very difficult to differentiate from each other.

One thing this entire article overlooks in regards to Arabic is the concept of Nahu. Maybe the emphasis is not to learn heavy grammar, but if any person must know know Nahu to use the Arabic language in any sort of productive way. This oversimplification of learning languages brushes off some of the most important aspects of the language.

Also, I completely have to disagree on the use of the Egyptian dialect. It has been taught in Western academic Arabic curricula and it has been popularized by Egyptian soap operas and media, but Egyptian Arabic is highly irregular in terms of pronunciation of letters and the use of general vocabulary across the Arabic world. The best accent to learn is probably the proper Jordanian accent, both in terms of universality of meaning and closeness to the proper pronunciations of the letters and words.

There are many differences between “modern” and “classical” Arabic, especially in vocabulary (words like ‘car’, ‘airplane’ , ‘television’), and a multitude of others don’t exist in “classical” Arabic, of course, but do in Modern Literary Arabic, as well as in the dialects. And some dialects in the mashreq have words like “shloonich” (how are you?), “ambahkou” (i am speaking ), “bi’ooluh” (they say...); etc., which are far from classical (or literary) Arabic! Nowhere today (unfortunately) is classical or literary Arabic the normal daily speech. ALL Maghreb dialects (including Chadian and Maltese!) use the verbal prefix “na-“ for “I”, for “we” the suffix “-u” is added. EVERYBODY uses their own local dialect (unless conversing with an Arab from a distant region...) Hopefully, as education spreads, this situation will be ameliorated!

I am native Romanian and understand Italian French Spanish ,even Portuguese.Ten years ago, I learned Modern Hebrew quite fast, then I start to learn Arabic MSA.I had to learn by heart the plural(s) for every noun/adjective.Arabic is even harder than German or Russian. Nowadays I don t understand Moroccan dialects - completely different language.

In conclusion Arabic is far more difficult than Hebrew ,Syriac,Amharic.Dispite its regular grammar and strange phonetics, you have to learn by heart most nouns and verbs.At least two forms,unless you wanna make mistakes.Arabic deserves its place next to Chinese,Japanese,Korean,etc.It is difficult,unique and (for some) sacred.So stop saying bullshit.

I’ve been living in Ethiopia for a year and a half now, and I must say (at least for me) Amharic has definitely been more of a challenge. I only studied Arabic for a semester in Egypt, but I found it much easier to navigate than Amharic, for three main reasons:

1) Lack of standardized resources for Amharic-- especially as you get into higher levels. As a Peace Corps Volunteer we were given language training, but even the Amharic teachers struggled to find ways to explain what they were teaching. There just really are not any good resources outside of local tutors/friends-- and even those can often be a struggle because they can’t communicate specific grammatical points.

2) The fidel! If reading the language is important to you than Amharic is definitely harder than Arabic. Learning to read from right to left was no problem compared to memorizing the different fidel and how they change based on which vowel. Sure there are common ways the fidel change based on vowels, but there are just some that throw you for a loop. Plus, there are several different fidel for sounds that are exactly the same-- several different h’s and s’s.

3) Explosives. The explosive p, t, and s are not that hard to learn, but many people don’t take the time to learn them or struggle with them. Not difficult, they just take some time-- like the kh and ain in Arabic.

Hope this gives some insight for anyone contemplating learning Amharic! yichalal!

do you think Amharic native speaker could be able to speak english fluently?

I, too, am on the Arabic adventure (moghamara!, one of my favorite words in Arabic, hehe)...and I find that one of the biggest impediments is the teaching method, which I am beginning to suspect is a worldwide Arabic teaching problem. Everything is focused on grammar, grammar, grammar, whereas the teachers of most other world languages have moved on to a communicative approach. I have taken 2 years of Moroccan Darija classes and am in the third year of Standard Arabic. The Darija classes were great because the teacher was pretty much given free range to do whatever she pleased, so we were forced to talk all the time, get into lifelike situations, learn useful vocabulary. After 2 years, we definitely knew far more than in 3 years of MSA. In MSA, we are taught the jussive, subjunctive, incredibly lengthy conjugations (how often are you gonna be using the feminine dual jussive of one of those hollow verbs, eh?), etc. but we are very very rarely given the chance to practice anything at all. So people can conjugate these insane verbs, but when asked to say “I want a glass of water,” they choke up, get nervous and say something incomprehensible. Anyway, it seems useless to study all the grammar if oral practice is not included.

But I shall persevere! I am growing to like MSA the more I know, but will always have a special affection for the whimsical, creative nature of Darija, with its hilarious expressions and endless slang (totally absent from MSA, and so much a fun part of language learning). I often feel like Darija is akin to English, in that it has many synonyms for the same idea, but each from different origins and having different nuances, because it often uses most or all of the words from Standard Arabic (with a pronunciation change), as well as synonyms from Berber, French, Spanish, Portuguese or English.

hey there..i’m ethiopian and a native amharic speaker (oromo, a cushitic language, is my mother-tongue).. I also know arabic. If you already got past your fear of foreign scripts, amharic is really easy to learn. The grammar is easier than english and reading the script is as easy as it could get, believe me! If you want to write ‘’grammar’’, you write symbols for ‘’g’’, ‘’ra’’, ‘’me’’,’’r’’. Just break down the word and that’s it. But you’ll obviously need to know the symbols..and they’re not hard. But they are formed in odd ways. The pronounciation is devoid of glottal stops and stressed H’s, but these don’t make arabic any harder. Well, i learnt arabic from reading and listening to tv from youn age. On the arab satellite, the dialect is usually standard & only ocassionally regional. But whatever dialect you learn, it wont be hard switching once you master it. As for classical and modern arabic, trust me it’s not comparable to shakespearian and modern english. They’re much closer.

p.s. One bad news for amharic learners..lack of material! Good news..almost no dialect disparities. Plus formal amharic is nearly the same as colloquial amharic.

There is a lack of resources currently, which sucks. As you’re fluent in both English and Amharic, could you consider applying for either an “English for Amharic speakers” or an “Amharic for English speakers” course here? (Where you are given the list of languages, to enter Amharic, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the list to where it says “Other”, select that, then type in “Amharic”. I understand if you can’t/don’t want to though. አመሰግናለሁ!

i will learn tigrinya, just not sure how fast, but i will. i don’t fond it hard, just different and amazingly lovely, and i am a bit intimidated by the script, coz im technically dyslexic, but since they pronounce as the write and, my first langue is like that, (english is my second language), i will also be less dyslexic in tigrinya then in english. because of the way english is, i am highly dyslexic precisely in that one, lol. thank you for encouraging me with you explanations about semitic languages.

I can say that one of my passions is Arabic, i speak spanish (my mother tongue), english, portuguese, chinese (after of 4 years of studies... I finally could say that I speak it in a good level). but Arabic is my obssesion... unfortunately here in my country there’s no arabic courses, no arabic teachers, no arabic people... so there’s no way to learn it. I found a teacher who was giving free online lessons.. so finally I started to learn. That experience was good and bad at the same time.. good because i started to learn Arabic.. But sometimes frustrating because the rythm was so slow... one hour a week lesson, and my group wasn’t very helpfull.. while i was waiting for learning more and moe things... the rest in the class.. were asking to repeat the last lesson over and over again.. because they never remembered what do we study in the last lesson.

I started with Classical Arabic.. because the lessons were designed for muslims, I’m not muslim, but these was the only one chance i had to learn “my language”. After of it, the teacher didn’t give more lessons.. iso I stopped my studies.

Some months ago, looking on youtube, I watched people who studies arabic in universities around the world.. then I thought.. why do they can speak arabic so well and I don’t? So i decided to study by myself...

I back to my Books. (I was using Al-Madinah book in class) so I looked over book 1, then i studied by myself book 2.. Now I’m working on a book called “Al-arabiya baina yadaik” it’s a bit classical.. but more modern than Madinah for sure.. anyway, classical arabic is not my goal. But helps me to be familiarized with arabic pronounciation it has many drills in different actual situations.. and everything has audio!. I don’t know if I’m doing well or not, but I’m just dropping all vocal endings, because I think when people rarely uses MSA, thet don’t use nounation. Please If I’m wrong let me know!

After of my studies of MSA I would like to have a Basis of egyptian dialect, in case that if I do speak with an arabic native speaker, i would like to sound a bit more familiar... but i’m still with some doubts rounding on my head... can i speak directly to any person using MSA? and speaking without vowel endings?? If it’s possible to mix MSA and dialect when I’m speaking???

It’s not a very big deal to speak MSA or a combination of both, especially that it’s not your native tongue
But if you want to learn a dialect i strongly advice you to learn Levantine, it’s the closest you would get to MSA, and it’s the most understood and most loved dialect in the Arab world, the only problem is, that there isn’t much sources to learn i think
I am currently learning Spanish, and i got to say, it’s easy, and Arabic is much closer to Spanish than it’s to English, and it have lots of Arabic words(Arroz, pants, camissa, etc) and it rules are also a little bit close

I have just started learning Hebrew a week ago. It’s incredible how similar to Arabic it is. I am confident to say I have learned a great deal in this extremely short period of time. I am native Arabic speaker and have been always intimidated by the seemingly completely different alphabet. I assumed I would be learning a completely alien language, but I obviously was wrong. My point is that once you master Arabic, Hebrew will be a piece of cake and vice versa.

Meriem-- First of all, MSA and Classical Arabic are not the same thing. Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur’an, it is not the same as written Modern Standard Arabic. And while I agree that Arabic learners should learn MSA, if you want to SPEAK Arabic without people laughing at you/feeling uncomfortable then you must learn a dialect. A person from Saudi Arabia and an Egyptian would not speak MSA to each other, they would either speak dialect (which both would be able to understand with little effort) or even English. Speaking MSA to each other in public would sound odd and uncomfortable. Also, many Arabic speakers understand MSA but only speak dialect.

I am an Arabic, there is no real difference between MSA and Classical Arabic, it’ just that after, it’s the same, and have the same words, but in CA one wouldn’t say Telefizieon for TV, but he would say “AlRa’i” which means something close to “The Vision-er” as in the the thing that let you see, and instead of saying “Camera” you would say “Swara” which is the “Machine Name” from the root “Sora” (picture-photograph) which means “The Photographer but not for the man but for the machine (the camera), you can understand it, but it would be weird to use it, even though some people do
Speaking MSA in public isn’t “very” weird especially if you’re talking about a serious thing or you are on tv or speaking about science-philosophy-all serious matter, and you can’t use anything but MSA for writing an article or a formal message
This is simply because dialect isn’t that reliable when talking about a serious matter because everyone would understand it in his own way, unlike MSA which have rules and it can’t mean something for a Syrian(i am Syrian) and mean something else for a Moroccan

Donovan, after reading this post, I just got motivated to learn both Arabic and Hebrew. I feel that once I get hang of one of these two languages, learning the other one wouldn’t be to difficult. Plus, they have similar pronunciations.

If i already know Hebrew fluently, how hard would it be to learn (spoken) Arabic?

I’m learning Modern Standard Arabic, because I was told (by lots of people) that I should learn that first and then pick up dialects if I plan to go to, say, Egypt. I want to read the newspapers and watch Al Jazeerah news programs and later, much later, books. My chances of going to Egypt, or anywhere else, are slim to none. Also, I know no Arabs, so I have no chance to speak with a real live Arab at present. So for now I’m sticking with Modern Standard Arabic, even though I agree with a lot of what you say. Thanks for the article.

Being an arabic native, I would recommend learning Modern Arabic or Classical Arabic two names for the same thing. Dialects are only recommended for someone who will be living in a given Arab country for a long time and wants to speak like the locals but if you do this than you won’t be able to read books or watch the news as it’s all done in the mother language not the dialects.
All Arabs default to Classical Arabic in a conversation if their dialects are two far from each other, anybody who has been to school understands it and it is really not like Shakespearean English...It is part of everyday life.

One of the things which attracted me to Arabic and Hebrew were those granular, explosive consonants - and in the case of Hebrew- the pure vowels, like Italian or Spanish. Plus- one gets to read the various scriptures in the original.

From maghreb.
Beginnig a new language needs to go to it source country.
If i want to learn the sweet English of Shakespeare we needs to go in Britain not in Wales o Scotland or Canada...(furthmore in german or sweden whore saxons).........
After learnig english we can attempt to understand those english dialectes ....
The same rules applies for Latin (thiugh it is a “dead” language not spoken today ....we need to go in Italia ....
good day.........

”we needs to go in Britain not in Wales o Scotland” <- LOL

You will be disappointed if you want to learn the English of Shakespeare my friend. No one, and I literally mean no one, speaks like that any more.

And, erm, Wales and Scotland are both in Britain.

From maghreb(suite)....
The arabic countries of Africa (Maghreb including Egypt) are not the origin source of arabic...but their dialects have most similiraties because their poeples are african not semitic like iraqian or syrian(somilar dialectes) ....like dialectes (of English) american and canadian..... .
Things that demonstrate the simplicity of arabic compared to others language is that I can understand easyly a poem writed in Ve century BC by the great arabic poet I.Quais.....(also for the holy quaran )...

The difference between the arabic and other languages:his simplicity.......
I speak easely the french.......but compared to english it is a nightmare....
I think the same comparing english to others language :his siimpliciy

But english suffers like arabic from their pronunciaton.......
good day.....

Arabic is unequivocally one of the hardest languages for Westerners. The working vocabulary is scarily enormous in spite of the root system, and the verb conjugations are patterned but complex, with many more sophisticated rules to learn than say, French. I believe the UN rightfully estimated that learning Arabic takes a good four times as long as learning a romance language (for English speakers). I believe it was about 2100 hours estimated time in a classroom only to get to a 3 on a 5 point scale of Moderb Standard Arabic only. It’s quite misleading to give people the impression that studying Arabic without previous exposure to or semitic languages is anything but a highly-challenging lifetime commitment, and that few who set out reach fluency in reality.

I would argue that those people fail for other reasons (motivation, time, methodology, etc.).

If I hadn’t achieved this myself, I wouldn’t be so confident in what I’m saying.

My name is Mohammad. I am from Ramallah city in Palestine. Certainly Arabic is my native language. Hebrew and English were my academic languages at “Hebrew College- Boston USA” where I studied for a master degree in Jewish Studies. I just want to say that all languages are beautiful and easy to learn especially when you have an interest to learn. Certainly Semitic languages are more difficult for European people for several factors like different shapes of letters and for the guttural letters. But this is not a big problem. I recommend the Jerusalemite Arabic dialect for people intend to learn spoken Arabic. It’s because this dialect is a “standard” and can be understood in all Arab countries. This relates to the geographic location of Palestine which is in the middle of the Arab world. I encourage everyone to learn Arabic and/or Hebrew.

I love the way Palestinians speak Arabic!

Thanks Mohammad. I appreciate your comment. Peace be upon you! Shalom!

I’m starting to learn Arabic and I have a Lebanese neighbor, but our communication is sometimes poor: although we chat in my native language (Portuguese), he doesn’t understand the conception of what is Modern Standard Arabic, what is Classical Arabic and what is just his dialect (being he Libanese, I think it’s Levantine), I don’t really know why, maybe because he came to Brazil a lot of time ago and I don’t know since when these three “types” of Arabic are well separated and known by the people, since when they keep it in mind.

What should I do? Should I try to “discover” what type of Arabic he’s speaking about? He’s not a teacher, I will learn Arabic most by myself, but it would be cool to have clues, tips, from him.

P.S.: Sorry for my bad English.

I have found that the Lebanese tend to run all of the consonants much more closely together and leave out most of the vowel sounds. If your neighbour originates from a Christian neighbourhood in the North of Lebanon, he may also add different words taken from Amaraic, which was widely spoken there. Those people tend not to have an Arab identity at all and see themselves as Phoenicians, which does influence their mindset on language and culture.

Speaking both Arabic (MSA) and Hebrew, I actually tend to say that the latter is harder since its grammar is more conservatively afroasiatic and Semitic (more antique in a sense).

Arabic is the easiest (not phonology-wise though, but that’s a detail since many arabic speakers can’t pronounce all arabic sounds in the first place... Take Hassan Nasrallah, he can’t pronounce ‘raa’).

Most Arabic speakers can pronounce all letters, Hassan Nasrallah and Bashar AlAssad are anomalies, most the people i know can pronounce every letter not just in Arabic but even the ones that doesn’t exist in Arabic (V,soft G, J,P), well at least i can

Thank you for mentioning that Mahgrebi Arabic really is quite different. If you speak Mahgrebi Arabic in the Middle East, you won’t be understood. However, most people in North African countries understand Modern Standard Arabic and most other dialects (especially Egyptian and Levantine, thanks to the entertainment industries). Generally, people can speak MSA, too although some Mahgrebi expressions tend to creep in.

True.

Are you learning Maghrebi Arabic, Liza?

I think people need to learn classical Arabic first,all Arabs know it,and on forums we chat with it,we listen to it in news and it’s the language you read in it ! it’s the base,it will be easy from that,to imitate whatever dialect you want,the most understood ones are the Egyptian and Syrian,because simply they are the leaders in making series,so people get to understand them with time.

You’ve almost convinced me to start learning Arabic soon. I had been freaked out by the script and grammar before I read this post but not anymore. I just have to decide whether I want to learn Egyptian or Levantine Arabic.

Would it be a good course of action to first learn standard Arabic and then learn various dialects later on after the mastery of standard? Or is standard Arabic much like Shakespearean English compared to modern English?

Classical Arabic is more comparable to Shakespearean English.

It all depends on what your goals are. If you just want to learn conversational Arabic, then start out with a dialect and forget MSA for a while.

If you’re learning Arabic for a job or to read newspapers and so on, then start with MSA.

Don’t learn MSA first up if your goal is to become a fluent speaker.

Thanks Yohannes.

How long have you been learning Amharic for?

I think for the most part Amharic is categorized as an easier language to learn becasuse of its less harsh or less alien sounding pronunciations, as appose to the harsh sounding, over emphasized “Kh’s” and “3aa’s” sounds that are found in other Semitic languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Tigrinya. Amharic is more gracile/soft sounding in nature.

Learning Amharic from an English speaking perspective is somewhat hard, but in contrast to learning other Semitic langauges like Arabic and Hebrew it is much easier, easier in regards to certain pronunciations (given the certain similarities), not in regards to sentence/word formations.

As a Hebrew speaker I can tell you it is not more easy to me learn Arabic for example, it’s hard too, yes their are similar words it helps but both languages are very difficult with a difficult grammar to learn.

Very cool, and thank you, because I’ve wanted to learn Arabic for a long time and had thought (well, maybe, but I’m going to wait until I’ve learned a few others because I’ve heard how hard it is so it’ll take forever to learn). Good to know it’s really not that bad--kinda reminds me of Chinese and Japanese actually, they’re both really easy to learn if you don’t count the writing system, Chinese in particular is known for having ridiculously simple grammar and Japanese grammar is also quite simple.

”Maha...attracted a huge following”

Gee, I wonder why, haha. Gorgeous girl :)

I’m especially interested in learning Lebanese Arabic, I checked and it turns out there are a ton of resources available for it and levantine/Eastern Arabic (which is the type of Arabic that Lebanese Arabic is), so that’s good to know.

Cheers,
Andrew

What a great post! I like that you broke down the problems of learning Arabic into reasonable chunks.

I have to admit that my problems with Arabic is syntax. When I try to say things link, “I want you to come with me,” I get tongue-tied.

Do you have any suggestions for Arabic syntax?

Thanks! :)

Which specific problems are you having with syntax?

For Egyptian you’d say “ana 3aizak tigi ma3aya” (I want you, you come, with me). It’s fairly straightforward. I think MSA is a little more confusing particularly when you have sentences where the verb is first but with a bit of practice it comes naturally.

I didn’t read all the way through, but wil come back to it. I found it interesting that you said people find your Australian accent difficult to understand. As another Australian I’ve found the opposite. Admittedly, I haven’t travelled a great deal and am still learning my first language but when I was in Europe we’d playy the game ‘do you know where we are from?’ with people. Very few guessed Australia but most said they found our Australian accents easier to understand than a harsh american accent or an english accent.

This is extremely well-done Donovan. Congrats.

The detailed breakdown of Arabic is eye-opening for me. As you mentioned, most of what I know of the Arabic language is that it is difficult to learn, complex and would be a major undertaking. The dialect issue is another thing that normally scares people (like me) off of the language.

Your clear breakdown and explanation convinced me otherwise, and I also learned a ton. Thanks a lot and keep them coming!

Thanks Jared.

By the way, Spanish is full of Arabic influence too :) Arabic influence on Spanish

Well thanks for this article. But i have to mention you are making arabic way too easy and it is not true. I am native speaker. Levantine accent . Not true that i can understand most of the dialects. Defnitly arabic is very difficult to pronounce. It is a pharyngial languge full of consonants. Widely spoken which makes it more diverse. Sorry to say that but i taught Arabic. It is absolutely difficult.

I am from Yemen and I can communicate with any Arab person using his/her Arabic dialect without any notable effort. We watch and listen to Egyptian and Syrian and Jurdanian and Levantine and Gulf (Kwait, Saudi, Iraqi, Qatari) drama and songs and poetry and jokes without any special effort to understand and enjoy them, the very same as we do with the Yemeni Arabic dialect.
The only Arabic dialect that is not as easy to us in Yemen as the other dialects is the Moroccan one, but we can communicate with Moroccans using the Egyptian dialect or the standard Arabic.

I believe that the focus on grammar in a lot of Standard/Classical Arabic instruction is largely responsible for the idea that Arabic is so hard. Just like any language, it has some really complex structures. The difference is that in “high” literary languages like Arabic, people actually teach them and expect students to be able to master them. As a linguist, I study a lot of complex things in English (or spoken Arabic dialects) that exist, but simply aren’t taught in any class. Accepting that proficiency in Arabic does not necessarily require mastery of all of the intricacies of the classical grammar can go a long way in making it less arduous to learn. After all, most educated native Arabic speakers make mistakes with the jussive, and they get along just fine. If you want to be a writer, journalist, or grammar professor then you should learn the right forms. If not, you’ll be in good company with most Arabs.

I do have to mention one factor which does make Arabic more difficult to learn than many European languages, at least for native speakers of English. Although there are lots of loan words from English (or other European languages) in the spoken dialects, there just aren’t a lot of cognates. This is true when learning any non-Indo-European language. As I was learning Arabic, I found it very hard to acquire new vocabulary because most of the words just didn’t have anything in common with what I knew already. Plus, if you hear a new word you can’t cheat and use your English knowledge to guess. This problem gets better at advanced levels when you have enough words to productively use the root/pattern system. People often ask me what’s hard about Arabic. They think it’s reading right to left, the strange script, or the funny consonants. For me, all of that paled in comparison to just learning vocabulary.

Oh, and I would also like to put some blame on the way that Arabic is taught. Because it is considered a “hard” language, many even *graduate* level courses are not conduced entirely in Arabic, or don’t expect the students to be able to really communicate with it. Arabic is a language like any other, and if students were encouraged to really use it for communication (either through immersion or other pedagogical tools), I think we could learn it faster. French majors have classes in French, so why not have our (at least upper-level) classes in Arabic? If you are never required to productively use it even in the classroom, of course you will feel that you don’t know it and aren’t making any progress.

Hi Sara.

There certainly is an expectation on students to master the intricacies of Arabic which I think is because of the ‘sacredness’ of the language to most Arabs, especially with Classical Arabic courses.

I did one course on fus7a when I was a beginner and I just gave it up because as you say, it was taught incorrectly and even Arab students hated the class. The way the grammar’s taught just overwhelms people.

As for vocabulary I haven’t really ever thought of Arabic vocab as tremendously difficult, but in saying that it’s the first foreign language that I ever learned (apart from Mandarin in school) so I didn’t get to start with an easy Romance language full of similar-looking, similar-sounding cognates.

I absolutely agree, Sara. It is much harder to remember the vocabulary in Arabic, for the reasons you state, than in the other (European languages) that I have learned. The grammatic structure does not present too much of a problem. I had begun to think that I had developed memory problems with Arabic, until I discussed my fear with other Arabic students. They all said the same.

I wonder if someone with dyslexia should shy away from Hebrew or languages using Arabic script because he/she could have trouble reading from right to left. Have you ever met someone from a right-to-left writing structure with dyslexia learning to read and write well in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu or Hebrew?

An article I read at some point last year suggested that scientifically Arabic should be easier for a dyslexic person. Israeli research had concluded that (and I’m paraphrasing here because I cannot fully remember the article or find it), unlike English and Hebrew, Arabic is read with the right side of the brain which is the side more dominant in those with dyslexia. Therefore, although Arabic may be more confusing for a dyslexic person who already struggles with English, a dyslexic child may find it easier to learn to write in Arabic than to learn to write in English. Hope that makes sense!

My son is in the second grade, dyslexic (native English speaker), but has been learning to read and write Hebrew in school since Kindergarten. He has struggled some, but his current teacher (who is Israeli and has a masters in special ed) will sometimes help him by holding up a mirror when he’s reading.

Reading in the mirror helps him immensely, which is so fascinating to me. Without the mirror, he struggles. With the mirror, he reads above grade-level. Over time he’ll begin to rely on the mirror less and less, so there is no concern about dependency.

I meant to ask if you know of a dyslexic whose language is read from left to right doing well with writing in languages using Arabic script or the Hebrew language?

I admit dyslexia’s something I’ve never considered for right-to-left languages, Susanna.

That article from the BBC that I cited above makes me wonder if Arabic would be a problem for those people though.

Ploni here would be a good person to ask about dyslexic people and Hebrew.

Im dyslexic and know Hebrew and English. I had no issues with the right to left. Sight reading (which I think is what dialectics do best) is easier in Hebrew without the vowels. The worlds are shorter than in English. Hebrew reading with vowels is much harder for me. All that info just gets so confusing. ;)

Thank you for this interesting post. Some time ago I was thinking about learning Arabic, since it is an important world language. But I was quite intimidated by comments (“Arabic is sooo difficult to learn”...) that I dropped the idea. Today, after reading this article, I put Arabic back on my language wish list! Hopefully the new timetable next semester will allow me to visit the Arabic course at my university.

Great. Good to hear! :)

Thanks Mae.