Is Arabic Hard to Learn? What's Hard and What Isn't

Yes, Arabic is hard for English speakers. The US State Department puts it in its hardest group, alongside Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. But the difficulty isn't where most people expect it. The script that looks so forbidding takes only a few weeks, and much of the grammar is surprisingly regular. What really takes time is reading without vowels, a handful of new sounds, a vocabulary with almost nothing familiar in it, and the gap between written Arabic and the Arabic people speak.

What the official numbers say

The State Department lists Arabic in Category IV, the "super-hard languages", at 88 weeks and 2,200 class hours to reach a professional level. That's twice as long as Russian or Turkish (44 weeks) and nearly three times Spanish or French (30 weeks). We've worked out what that means at an hour a day.

Those figures are for English speakers aiming at professional fluency. If your first language is Hebrew, Persian, Urdu, Turkish or Malay, you'll recognise more than an English speaker does, and you'll reach a basic level far sooner.

What's easier than you'd expect

The alphabet. Arabic has 28 letters, and many share a shape that only dots tell apart: ب, ت, ث are b, t and th. Most learners can read slowly within a few weeks. Our plan for learning the alphabet splits the letters into groups.

Few tenses. Arabic verbs have a past form and a present form. For the future you add سَـ (sa-) or سَوْفَ (sawfa) to the present: يَكْتُبُ (yaktubu, he writes) becomes سَيَكْتُبُ (sayaktubu, he will write). That's the whole tense system, though the present has a few mood forms you'll meet later. See our lessons on the past, present and future.

No "is" in the present. "The house is big" is simply الْبَيْت كَبِير (al-bayt kabīr), literally "the house big". These nominal sentences let beginners say a lot very early.

One word for "the", none for "a". The prefix ال (al-) works for every noun, singular or plural, masculine or feminine. Its one quirk, the sun and moon letters, takes an afternoon.

Regular patterns. Arabic builds words by pouring a three-letter root into fixed patterns. Once you know that مَفْعَل often names a place, مَلْعَب (malʿab) is easy to guess: it comes from "to play", so it's a sports ground. It's one of the most systematic ways of building words in any language, and our post on roots and patterns shows how far it takes you.

What really takes time

Reading without short vowels

Arabic writes consonants and long vowels. Short vowels are small marks above and below the letters, the harakat, and ordinary printed Arabic leaves them out. Course books, children's books and the Quran print them; newspapers, novels and street signs don't.

Unvowelled	With vowels	Meaning
كتب	كَتَبَ	he wrote (kataba)
كتب	كُتُب	books (kutub)
كتب	كُتِبَ	it was written (kutiba)

A native reader picks the right one from context without thinking. For a learner, that ability builds slowly, word by word, and it's the single biggest reason Arabic takes so many hours.

New sounds

Arabic has sounds English simply doesn't have. ع (ʿayn) is a tight squeeze in the throat, ح (ḥāʾ) a breathy h from deep in the throat, ق (qāf) a k pronounced far back, and خ (khāʾ) a rasp like the ch in Scottish loch. There are also "emphatic" letters, ص ض ط ظ, heavier versions of s, d, t and dh. You can learn to say them in a few weeks; hearing the difference between س and ص in fast speech takes much longer.

Broken plurals

Some plurals add an ending, but many change the inside of the word:

Singular	Plural	Meaning
كِتَاب (kitāb)	كُتُب (kutub)	book, books
وَلَد (walad)	أَوْلَاد (awlād)	boy, boys
مَدْرَسَة (madrasa)	مَدَارِس (madāris)	school, schools

These follow patterns too, but there are many, and you usually have to learn each plural with its noun. Our lesson on plural forms groups the common ones.

Agreement and the dual

Arabic marks gender almost everywhere. "You write" is تَكْتُبُ (taktubu) to a man and تَكْتُبِينَ (taktubīna) to a woman, and adjectives and verbs agree with their nouns. There's also a dual for exactly two things: كِتَابَانِ (kitābāni, two books). None of it is irregular, but it's a lot to keep track of while speaking.

Case endings

Formal Arabic has three case endings, short vowels at the end of nouns. Since short vowels aren't written, you mostly see them in vowelled texts and hear them in formal speech, the news and recitation. In everyday reading aloud many speakers drop them at the end of a phrase. Learn what they are early, but don't let them stop you from talking.

Two kinds of Arabic

This is the one that surprises people most. Books, newspapers and news broadcasts use Modern Standard Arabic, or fuṣḥā. Daily conversation in Cairo, Beirut, Riyadh or Casablanca uses a local dialect, and the dialects differ from each other as well as from the standard. "What do you want?" is مَاذَا تُرِيد؟ (mādhā turīd?) in standard Arabic, but you'll hear ʿāyiz ēh? in Cairo and shū biddak? in Beirut. We explain how to handle this in MSA or dialect: which Arabic to learn.

Is it worth it?

If you have a reason, yes. Arabic opens a literature that runs from 8th-century fables like Kalila and Dimna to Gibran, a huge region to travel and work in, and a lot of goodwill from people who rarely hear foreigners try. The early stage is also more rewarding than its reputation: within a month you can read words on a sign, and within a few months you can follow a simple text.

You can start now with no account: Arabic grammar lessons, word lists with audio, and the opening of The Broken Wings, with a translation under every line.

Our Learn Arabic app comes out on 1 December. It begins with the alphabet and harakat, covers the grammar above in 18 lessons, and gives you graded readings and six classics in the original once you're ready. Join the waitlist and we'll send you one email on launch day.