Arabic Cartoons, TV Shows and Films > Arabic Songs
Start with Fairuz, نسم علينا الهوا (Nassam Alayna El Hawa). It is slow, the lines are short, and the chorus repeats often enough to learn in one sitting. The table below gives twelve Arabic songs with the country they come from, the dialect they are sung in, and one line of the chorus in Arabic script, transliteration and English.
That last column is the point of this page. The other learner song lists you will find name the songs and tell you they are good practice. Not one of them shows a single line of what you are about to hear, which is the only way to judge whether a song is at your level before you spend an evening on it.
Transliteration. One scheme is used throughout, the same one as our page of common Arabic phrases in three dialects: kh is the ch of Scottish loch, gh is a gargled r, ع is written ʿ, and a glottal stop is written ʾ. No dots under the emphatic letters. Song lyrics are dialect, so the transliteration follows the singer, not the dictionary.
Twelve Arabic songs, with a line of each chorus
These twelve come from eight countries. Nine are in a spoken dialect and three are in Modern Standard Arabic, because those three are sung poetry rather than pop. Read the dialect column before the tempo column: a Moroccan song will not help you talk to anyone in Cairo, however good it is.
| Song | Artist | Country | Dialect sung | Tempo and level | One line of the chorus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nassam Alayna El Hawa (1968) | Fairuz | Lebanon | Levantine | Slow, beginner | نسم علينا الهوا من مفرق الوادي nassam ʿalayna l-hawa min mafraʾ il-wadi The breeze blew over us from the fork of the valley |
| El Bint El Shalabiya | Fairuz | Lebanon | Levantine | Slow, beginner | البنت الشلبية عيونها لوزية il-bint ish-shalabiyye, ʿyunha lawziyye The pretty girl, her eyes are almond-shaped |
| Tamally Maak (2000) | Amr Diab | Egypt | Egyptian | Mid-tempo, beginner | تملي معاك ولو حتى بعيد عني tamalli maʿak, w-law hatta baʿid ʿanni Always with you, even when you are far from me |
| Nour El Ain (1996) | Amr Diab | Egypt | Egyptian | Fast, intermediate | حبيبي يا نور العين يا ساكن خيالي habibi ya nur il-ʿein, ya sakin khayali My love, light of my eye, you who live in my imagination |
| Ya Rayah (1973) | Dahmane El Harrachi | Algeria | Algerian darija | Mid-tempo, advanced | يا رايح وين مسافر تروح تعيا وتولي ya rayeh win msafer, truh taʿya w-twalli You who are leaving, where are you headed? You will go, wear yourself out, and come back |
| LM3ALLEM (2015) | Saad Lamjarred | Morocco | Moroccan darija | Fast, advanced | انت معلم وحنا منك نتعلم enta mʿallem w-hna mennak netʿallem You are the master and we learn from you |
| Ya Halali Ya Mali | Mohammed Assaf | Palestine | Palestinian | Fast, intermediate | يا حلالي يا مالي ya halali ya mali What is rightfully mine, what I own |
| Zidini Ishqan (1996) | Kadim Al Sahir, words by Nizar Qabbani | Iraq, Syrian poet | Modern Standard | Slow, intermediate | زيديني عشقا زيديني zidini ʿishqan zidini Give me more love, give me more |
| Boshret Kheir (2014) | Hussain Al Jassmi | Emirati singer, Egyptian song | Egyptian | Fast, intermediate | قوم نادي ع الصعيدي وابن أخوك البورسعيدي ʾum nadi ʿa-s-saʿidi w-ibn akhuk il-borsaʿidi Get up and call the man from Upper Egypt, and your nephew from Port Said |
| Fog El Nakhal | Ilham al-Madfai; the standard recording is Nazem Al-Ghazali's | Iraq | Iraqi | Mid-tempo, intermediate | فوق النخل فوق يابه فوق النخل فوق foug in-nakhal foug, yaba, foug in-nakhal foug Above the palm trees, above; oh father, above the palm trees, above |
| Ummi | Marcel Khalife, words by Mahmoud Darwish | Lebanon, Palestinian poet | Modern Standard | Slow, intermediate | أحن إلى خبز أمي ahinnu ila khubzi ummi I long for my mother's bread |
| Kelmti Horra (2012) | Emel Mathlouthi | Tunisia | Modern Standard | Slow, intermediate | أنا حر وكلمتي حرة ana horr w-kelmti horra I am free and my word is free |
Three rows carry something worth knowing before you press play. The title of Fog El Nakhal is an argument as much as a lyric: it is usually printed فوق النخل, above the palm trees, and just as often printed فوق إلنا خل, we have a sweetheart up there. In Iraqi speech the two are near impossible to tell apart, and Iraqis still disagree about which one they are singing. Mahmoud Darwish wrote Ummi in an Israeli prison in 1956; Marcel Khalife set it to music decades later, and it has been sung as a Palestinian anthem since. Kelmti Horra came out of the Tunisian revolution the same way.
How we chose these twelve, and what we left out
One rule decided every row: we had to be able to name the variety of Arabic in the recording and check the chorus line against a published source. A song we could not pin to a dialect is not on the page, and a line we could not verify was dropped rather than guessed. After that the test was practical. Can a learner hear separate words in the chorus at normal speed? A song where the words dissolve into the melody is beautiful and useless.
Three things we deliberately left out.
Umm Kulthum. The greatest singer in the history of the language, and the worst possible place to start. Alf Leila wa Leila, composed by Baligh Hamdi in 1969, runs around forty to fifty minutes, roughly eight of them an instrumental introduction before she sings a word. She then repeats one line over and over, bending it through different maqam each time. That repetition is the whole art, and for a beginner it means an hour of listening for a handful of new words in classical poetic register. Come back to her at intermediate.
Mahraganat, the electro-shaabi that has been the most-played music in Egypt since it came out of the Cairo neighborhoods around 2006. The Egyptian Musicians Syndicate banned its performers from public venues in February 2020 over the language in the lyrics, which is the short version of why it is a poor vocabulary source. The slang is dense and the vocals are processed almost past the point of hearing a word, and half of what you would learn is not repeatable in front of the family you are visiting.
Khaled's Aicha, which turns up on nearly every list of Arabic songs for learners. The 1996 hit was written by the French songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman and the version everyone knows is mostly in French, with Arabic lyrics Khaled added himself for one section. Twenty minutes with it buys you a few lines of Algerian and a lot of French practice.
We also left out the alphabet and nursery songs aimed at Arab children. They teach the names of the letters, which a chart teaches faster in an afternoon, and after that they teach vocabulary an adult never uses.
How to actually use a song
Work on one song for a week rather than twelve songs for an evening. The gain comes from repetition on material you already half know, and a song is the rare thing you will replay thirty times without getting bored.
The routine we recommend has four passes. Play it once for pleasure with no text in front of you. Then find the Arabic lyrics, search the title in Arabic script with the word كلمات (kalimat, lyrics), and read the chorus while it plays. Then pull six to ten words out of the chorus into whatever flashcard system you use, and no more than ten, because the fifteenth word from a song you cannot yet sing is a card you will delete in a month. Finally, sing it. Badly is fine. Producing the sounds is what moves a word from something you recognize to something you can say, and it is the step nearly everyone skips.
A slow song is also the easiest place to hear the two sounds English speakers lose first. In the Fairuz line above, mafraʾ is مفرق with the ق swallowed into a glottal stop, which is what Levantine does with that letter; the same word read in Modern Standard is mafraq. A line later, ʿalayna opens on ع, the squeeze in the throat with no English equivalent, and Fairuz holds it long enough that you can copy it. Neither of those survives a transliteration you read in silence.
Two more habits. Keep a note of which dialect each song fed, so your word list does not quietly turn into a mix of Moroccan and Levantine that no single person speaks. And run new words through our Arabic vocabulary lists to see whether a word is everyday Arabic or a poetic one you will only meet in lyrics.
Which dialect each song builds
Six of the twelve are Levantine or Egyptian, counting Palestinian as Levantine, and that weighting is deliberate: those two dialects reach the most speakers and have the most learning material behind them. If you have not chosen a dialect yet, decide before you build a word list, because the choice determines which of these twelve songs are practice and which are entertainment. Our guide to choosing which Arabic dialect to learn walks through it.
For Levantine, start with the two Fairuz tracks and carry on into the courses and books on our Lebanese Arabic resources page. For Egyptian, start with Amr Diab and move to Egyptian Arabic resources. The Maghrebi songs are the hardest listening on this page by a wide margin, with French and Amazigh vocabulary and vowels dropped everywhere, so treat Ya Rayah and LM3ALLEM as goals rather than starting points.
Where to go next
Songs run out fast. Three or four minutes of audio, most of it repeated, is not enough listening once your ear starts working, and the natural next step is watching material once songs stop being enough. From there, the same dialects in full sentences gives you hours of Levantine or Egyptian per season instead of minutes, and channels that break down lyrics line by line covers the days you have twenty minutes and no season to start.
Frequently asked questions
Can you really learn Arabic from songs?
You can learn pronunciation, rhythm and a few dozen words per song, and you can build the habit of hearing Arabic every day. You cannot learn grammar or reach conversation from songs alone. Treat a song as the listening half of a course, not as the course. The one thing music does better than any textbook is get you to replay the same sixty seconds twenty times without losing interest, which is exactly what your ear needs.
Which Arabic songs are best for a beginner?
Fairuz. Nassam Alayna El Hawa and El Bint El Shalabiya are slow, the lines are short, the words repeat, and the singing sits close to speech rather than stretching one syllable across a whole bar. Both are Lebanese, so what you learn is Levantine. For Egyptian, Amr Diab's Tamally Maak from 2000 is the equivalent starting point.
Are Arabic songs in Modern Standard Arabic or in dialect?
Almost all pop and folk songs are in dialect, which is the opposite of Arabic cartoons and news broadcasts. The exceptions are songs built on written poetry: Kadim Al Sahir singing Nizar Qabbani, Marcel Khalife singing Mahmoud Darwish, and protest songs such as Emel Mathlouthi's Kelmti Horra. Those are in Modern Standard Arabic and they feed your reading rather than your speaking.
Why do so many Arab pop singers sing in Egyptian dialect?
Because Egyptian is the dialect the whole Arab world already understands, after a century of Egyptian cinema, radio and television. Boshret Kheir is the clearest example: the singer, Hussain Al Jassmi, is Emirati, but the song was written by the Egyptian lyricist Ayman Bahgat Amar and composed by the Egyptian Amr Mostafa, and it is sung entirely in Egyptian Arabic.
How do I find the lyrics of an Arabic song?
Search the song title in Arabic script plus the word kalimat, which means lyrics. Searching in English mostly returns transliterations, and transliteration schemes disagree with each other, so you end up learning a spelling nobody uses. Once you have the Arabic text, paste single lines into a dictionary rather than a full-page machine translation, which flattens dialect into Modern Standard and hides what you actually heard.