How to learn Arabic: the best way, stage by stage

To learn Arabic, choose Modern Standard Arabic or one dialect, learn the alphabet with audio in about two weeks, then work one grammar book front to back with a tutor and daily Anki review. Start speaking by month three and unvowelled reading in year two. Our grammar pick is A New Arabic Grammar by Haywood and Nahmad.

This is how to learn Arabic the way one adult beginner did it, from the alphabet to a university Arabic certificate. Below it is laid out as six stages, each with a time budget, the resource we pick for it, and a test to pass before you move on. The popular options we tell people to skip are further down.

The roadmap: six stages, from letters to fluent reading

Learning Arabic runs in six stages: letters and sounds, reading speed, core grammar, speaking, unvowelled reading, and professional fluency. The times below are our planning budget for someone studying about an hour a day with a tutor once or twice a week. Treat them as our estimates: none of them was recorded with a clock. The last row is the official ceiling.

The last row comes from the US Foreign Service Institute, which puts Arabic in its hardest group, Category IV, at 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours. That figure is for full-time government students aiming at a score of 3 in speaking and listening on the ILR scale, and the FSI's typical week is 23 hours in class plus 17 hours of self-study. An hour a day for two years, which covers stages 1 to 5, comes to about 730 hours, roughly a third of the FSI's class hours alone. For a goal well short of professional work, that is about right. Our page on how long it takes to learn Arabic runs the same arithmetic for other daily budgets.

Not starting from zero? Take our Arabic level test and start at the stage it puts you in, rather than redoing the alphabet out of politeness.

First, choose Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect

Choose by what you want to do with Arabic, before stage 1. If the goal is reading books, news or the Quran, take Modern Standard Arabic, called fusha, and follow the table as written. Our guide to learning Modern Standard Arabic from the start walks that path book by book.

If the goal is talking to people in one country, learn that country's dialect first and add MSA later. Stages 1, 2 and 4 stay the same. Stage 3 changes: swap the grammar book for a course in your dialect, from that dialect's page on our Arabic dialect resources hub. If you have not picked one, we score the eight main dialects and name one in our ranking of Arabic dialects to learn. Trying to do both from day one is how beginners stall.

How we chose

Every resource on this page had to pass three tests, and anything that failed one of them was left off or named as a skip.

• Does it explain the rule, or only show it? A book that sprinkles grammar through dialogues without explaining any of it works in a classroom and fails a self-studier.
• Does it make you produce Arabic? Recognizing a word on a screen is not the same skill as saying it or writing it. Anything that only tests recognition is a warm-up.
• Was it still in use after month three? Almost every app passes week one. The interesting question is what survives a year of daily study.

The books in stages 1 to 4 are the ones I actually used. The stage 5 readers and the vocabulary and sentence pages are our recommendations, chosen or built afterwards for the gaps my own path had. The full account, including what went wrong, is in how I learned Arabic as an adult. Prices and subscription plans change constantly, so check before you buy anything named here.

Stages 1 and 2: the alphabet in two weeks, then reading speed

Learn to read the 28 letters before you learn a single phrase, and learn them from a book or course that includes audio so you hear each sound made correctly. Arabic has sounds English does not, and a mispronounced letter learned in week one is still there in year three.

This stage matters more in Arabic than in French or Spanish because Arabic normally leaves out the short vowels. The three letters of كتب can be read as kataba (he wrote) or kutub (books), and only context and grammar tell you which. Beginner texts print the vowels; real ones do not. The sooner you can read a word without them, the sooner everything else opens up.

Do not lean on transliteration past the first two weeks. Writing Arabic in English letters feels like progress and is a crutch that slows everything after it. Our list of Arabic alphabet books and courses covers the books with audio, the free video lessons, and the printable writing worksheets. The first four weeks, concretely:

• Weeks 1 and 2. Thirty minutes a day on the alphabet, from a book with audio. Write each letter by hand in all its forms. Put every letter into Anki on day one and review it every morning. Stop reading transliteration after day three.
• Week 3. Read short vowelled words aloud, every day, and time yourself on a fixed passage so you can see the number fall. Keep adding to Anki.
• Week 4. Open chapter one of the grammar book and do every exercise in it. Book a first tutor session and read your homework aloud to them.

Stage 3: one grammar book, worked front to back

Pick one grammar book and finish it, doing every exercise, rather than sampling four. Our pick is A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by Haywood and Nahmad: it is dense, it explains rules properly instead of hinting at them, and every chapter ends in exercises with a separately sold answer key so a self-studier can mark their own work.

The method that made it work was unglamorous. Preview the chapter vocabulary about two chapters ahead, learn the chapter, do every single problem, then go over the mistakes at the next lesson. The outcome was solid grammar and clean translation in both directions, and badly neglected listening and speaking. That is the book's honest weakness: it will not teach you to talk. Plan the speaking separately from day one. I did not, and I paid for it later in listening practice I should have been doing all along.

Our longer review of A New Arabic Grammar goes chapter by chapter. If it looks too steep, the Madina series and Mastering Arabic on our list of Arabic grammar books ramp up more gently, and Madinah Arabic puts a full grammar course online for free.

Stage 4: buy a tutor before you buy anything else

One hour a week with a tutor does more than any app on this page. A tutor catches a wrong letter sound in week one instead of year three, answers the question a grammar book leaves unanswered, and makes you speak, which is the skill self-study quietly drops.

I had lessons over Skype every weekday for more than a year, and I would not have got through the grammar book without them. Weekday sessions are more than most people need or can pay for. One or two a week, with homework between them, does the job. Tutors set their own hourly rate, so shop around on our list of Arabic tutors and services, which covers italki, Natakallam, conversation exchanges, and the audio course services.

The best app to learn Arabic

The best app for learning Arabic is Anki, a general flashcard program with no Arabic content of its own. It wins because you fill it with exactly the words and rules that are giving you trouble, and its spaced repetition schedule brings each one back just before you forget it. It was used at every stage: letters, then words, then grammar rules, then whole sentences.

What we skipped, and why

Three things that get recommended constantly for Arabic are not part of our answer. Here is the reason in each case.

Is Al-Kitaab good for self-study?

Not on its own. I took a four-course university Arabic certificate built entirely on the Al-Kitaab series, after already working through the grammar book above. I did not learn one new grammar point in it. The course was quite lacking: the series trades away grammar explanation, and teaches a few bad habits along the way, in order to spend the space on listening and speaking. The tell was that most of my classmates were quietly passing round other grammar books to fill the gaps.

Al-Kitaab is on our grammar list because with a teacher who supplements it properly it works well. Alone, on your kitchen table, it does not. I do not regret the certificate. Having someone else confirm the level was worth something to me. Apart from the dialect listening and speaking in each chapter, it taught me nothing new.

Is Duolingo good for learning Arabic?

Duolingo Arabic is fine as a warm-up and wrong as a plan. It gives you no grammar explanation, so you cannot work out why a sentence took the shape it did. It has you tapping prepared word tiles instead of producing Arabic from nothing. And it keeps transliteration in front of you well past the point where you should have stopped reading it. Keep it for the days you have ten minutes and no energy. Do not mistake the streak for progress.

Can you use Al Arabiyyah Bayna Yadayk without a tutor?

Only if you already have the grammar, and even then only with the answer key. The book itself is excellent and I am still working through it. Its four units open each chapter with a conversation, then vocabulary, then sentence drills, then reading comprehension, and it improved my speaking and listening more than anything else I used. The problem is that it sprinkles grammar rules everywhere and explains almost none of them. Without a tutor or at minimum the answer key, a beginner will be stuck inside a week. Come to it once you have some grammar, or with a tutor beside you.

Stage 5: once you can read a sentence

The moment reading stops being decoding, switch most of your study time to input. Two things get you there. The first is learning to use an Arabic dictionary, which is not alphabetical the way an English one is: words are filed under the three consonants of their root, so مكتب maktab (office) sits under the root k-t-b next to كتاب kitab (book). Our guide to Arabic dictionaries and how to look a word up walks through it and names the free online options.

The second is graded reading. Qisas an-Nabiyin starts with simple words and gets harder chapter by chapter, bilingual short-story collections put the translation on the facing page, and children's books are the easiest real Arabic in existence. They are all on our list of Arabic reading books.

That is the whole method. It is slower in month one than an app and far faster by month six. If you are still deciding whether to start, read whether Arabic is actually hard to learn, which depends entirely on which skill you mean.

Frequently asked questions

How do I learn Arabic by myself?

Learn the alphabet from a book with audio, then work one grammar book front to back and do every exercise in it. We recommend A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language by Haywood and Nahmad, with its answer key, because a self-studier needs a book that explains the rule rather than one that only shows it. Put every new word into Anki and review it daily, and pass each stage's self-test before you move on. Add a tutor as soon as you can afford one, even once a week.

What is the best way to learn Arabic?

Two weeks on the alphabet with audio, then one grammar book worked front to back with a tutor, plus daily spaced repetition in Anki. Speaking starts by month three, alongside the grammar, and unvowelled reading follows in year two. It is slower than an app in month one and far faster by month six.

What is the best app to learn Arabic?

Anki, which is a general flashcard program with no Arabic content of its own. It is the only app that stayed useful from the first letter to reading books, because you fill it with the exact words and rules you are struggling with. It is free on desktop and Android and a paid app on iPhone. Language apps are worth keeping as supplements, not as the plan.

Is Duolingo good for learning Arabic?

It is a supplement, not a method. Duolingo Arabic gives no grammar explanation, keeps you tapping word tiles instead of producing sentences, and leans on transliteration long after you should have dropped it. If you enjoy it, use it as a warm-up before real study. On its own it will not get you reading unvocalized Arabic.

Should I learn Modern Standard Arabic or a dialect first?

Learn whichever one you will actually use first. MSA, called fusha, is the register of writing, news, and the Quran, and it is what almost every grammar book teaches. A dialect is what people speak. If your goal is reading, start with MSA. If your goal is talking to people in one country, start with that dialect and add MSA later. Trying to do both from day one is how beginners stall.

How much does it cost to learn Arabic?

You can get to reading fluency for the price of two books and nothing else, since Anki is free on desktop and Android and there are free grammar courses and free Foreign Service Institute audio courses online. The one thing worth paying for is a tutor, priced per hour and set by the tutor. Prices and plans change, so check before you buy anything named on this page.

Keep learning Arabic

• Arabic Learning ResourcesCheck out the lists of resources for learning Arabic.  Resources include grammar books, videos, and apps to help you learn Arabic.
• How to Start Learning Modern Standard Arabic: A Staged RoadmapA staged plan to learn Modern Standard Arabic: the book for each stage, what it costs, how many weeks to give it, and a self-test to pass before moving on.
• Arabic Level Test: 30 Questions, From the Alphabet to the NewspaperA free 30-question Arabic language test that gives a self-check reading level from Novice up to Advanced, what to study next, and official exams and prices.
• Arabic Last Names: What They Mean and Where They Are Found60 Arabic last names in Arabic script with their meanings, from Haddad (blacksmith) to al-Qahtani, plus what Al, Bin and Abu mean and where each name is found.