Levantine Dialect | Tips to Learn Arabic
1. Conversation, Conversation, Conversation. If there’s a “secret” or “hack” to learning Levantine Arabic, it’s this: hours and hours of awkward and strenuous conversation with people better than you in that Arabic. An hour of conversation (with corrections and a dictionary for reference) is as good as five hours in a classroom.
There are a few reasons for this. The first is motivation. I don’t care how cool your study guide is, you’re going to be far more invested and motivated to communicate with native Arabic speaker in front of you than sitting in a classroom.
The second reason is that Arabic is something that needs to be processed, not memorized.
2. Study Levantine Arabic Everyday
I don’t care how many hours you want to study, but even studying 10min a day is better than studying 5 hours once a week. Arabic requires a lot of repetition, a lot of reference experiences, and a consistent commitment and investment.
3. Arabic Classes are an inefficient use of time and money. All things considered, you get a really poor return for your time and effort in group classes. There are two problems. The first is that the class moves at the pace of its slowest student. The second is that learning Arabic is a personal process — everyone naturally learns some words or topics easier than others.
4. Start with the 100 most common Arabic words. Not all vocabulary is made the same. Some give you a better return on investment than others.
Start with the 100 most common Arabic Phrases and then make Arabic sentences with them over and over again. Learn just enough grammar to be able to do this and do it until you feel pretty comfortable with all of them.
5. You’re going to say a lot of stupid things. Accept it and deal with it.
6. Use audio and online Levantine courses for the first 100 words and basic grammar. After that, they should only be used for reference and nothing more. There are a lot of study materials out there (I recommend Our online Arabic courses, The Nassra Arabic Method
But remember, the greatest return on investment in learning Arabic is forcing yourself to speak and communicate with others.
7. After the first 100 Arabic vocabulary, focus on becoming conversational. Studies have shown that the most common 100 Arabic words in any language account for 50% of all spoken communication. The most common 1,000 Arabic words account for 80% of all spoken communication. The most common 3,000 words account for 99% of communication.