For some time now, people have been asking my opinion about learning Arabic with various language learning apps. I see this as a frequently asked question on Reddit groups as well, so I thought I’d dedicate some time to addressing it here. Obviously, I’m a fan of human-to-human interaction for language learning—and most everything else. I’ll mention some of the many reasons why this is more efficient and effective for learning Arabic later on. But I want to lead by acknowledging some features I do like about language learning apps for those who have no alternative, perhaps due to strict budget constraints.

 

So, can you learn Arabic using a language app? Of course you can pick up a bit of any language anywhere. But the first question to ask yourself is: what Arabic are you trying to learn?

 

Not all dialects are available on apps. I’ve met many people who’ve spent a lot of time and energy learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), only to realize upon arriving in an Arabic-speaking country that MSA is not normally used for casual communication.

 

Arabs speak colloquial Arabic in daily life and only learn MSA when they go to school to read and write formally. If you want to read the newspaper or watch the news, MSA is used. But on the street and in personal relationships, you need a spoken dialect to communicate with local people.

 

Even written communication—such as on WhatsApp, Facebook, or Reddit—is now primarily done in the spoken dialect. Because not all apps make every dialect accessible, your choice of dialect should guide whether you use an app or enroll in spoken Arabic classes at a dedicated language center.

 

The most important thing when considering a dialect is that you become extremely proficient in one.

 

Dabbling in a few hundred words won’t allow you to communicate easily across the many various dialects of Arabic. In fact, some versions of Arabic are so dissimilar that mutual intelligibility studies show only a two-thirds overlap (like between Libyan and Tunisian Arabic). Some linguists argue they are as distinct as Portuguese is from Spanish. For this reason, you should not expect that learning a bit of a spoken dialect will serve you everywhere you travel in the Arabic-speaking world.

 

Instead, you need to reach an advanced level of proficiency in one Arabic dialect. The further you go in a single dialect, the easier the transition will be when you want to begin learning another.

 

When I lived in Italy for a month to relocate my daughter for school, I intended to take immersion classes, but I fell ill. I decided to give Duolingo a chance.

 

After a month, I knew how to say hello, goodbye, and order a coffee with milk and a croissant. It was disappointing to see how little language Duolingo believed I could take on. Each lesson spent exhaustive time reviewing the same words over and over, as though it didn’t trust the brain’s incredible ability to store multiple lexical items in a single session.

 

Research on vocabulary acquisition by Paul Nation insists that learners are capable of acquiring 30 to 100 words per hour and remembering them for weeks. If we move at a snail’s pace, it will be decades before we can have a real conversation.

 

Furthermore, Duolingo forces you to master spelling from the beginning. Early lessons act as spelling tests, putting writing on an equal priority with speaking and understanding. As a terrible speller in my own language, I resented having to spell a word just to prove I recognized what I was hearing. This drastically slows down comprehension by focusing on an unnecessary skill for beginners.

 

My primary concern about apps like this—aside from the slow progression—is that they cause people to feel like they are learning a language while they are actually just spinning their wheels.

 

I can’t tell you how many people I meet who have made several attempts at learning the Levantine Arabic dialect prior to enrolling in a structured language center, only to have their motivation and self-confidence eaten away by failure. Learning language requires moving forward quickly. In the beginning, introduction to new vocabulary and basic concepts should be fast and furious. Mastery shouldn’t be the immediate goal; repetition through forward movement is what builds fluency.

 

Pimsleur swings in the opposite direction, introducing vocabulary and immediately expecting you to produce it in full sentences. You have to listen to a lesson and produce complete thoughts right away, and Pimsleur instructs you not to move on until you’ve mastered 80% of the material.

 

However, they do have a helpful feature: a separate skills section with isolated phrases that you can loop over and over. This reminds me of my old Sony recorder with an A/B loop button, which is fantastic for getting hard-to-say things down.

 

My biggest issue with Pimsleur and similar apps, though, is that you are forced to learn through the lens of English. When we learn this way, we fail to link the language directly to its own context. For example, knafeh in Jordan isn’t something we can just assign an English word to. By asking you to process Arabic through English, meaning and situation remain tied to your home culture, which stunts your ability to recognize how meaning changes in context.

 

I define fluency as speaking a language fluidly without hesitation. To do that, you have to build confidence through an extensive amount of practice and spontaneous communication.

 

With a well-trained language coach who reflects back your flawed sentences and demonstrates the correct way to say them, you quickly gain confidence. Apps cannot offer you critical, gentle feedback in a safe environment.

 

Another area where apps fall short is teaching clear speech patterns and cultural appropriateness. Arabic is a highly patterned language. Hearing how to conjugate concepts in fast sequence helps you absorb grammar naturally. Furthermore, apps cannot teach you social-cultural behavior—such as, for example, when to address an elderly man on the street as ʾammo (uncle) rather than “brother.”

Can you learn a language using an app? The short answer is yes, you can learn a few words and phrases. But if your goal is to engage in lengthy exchanges and form deep connections with people, no app is going to take you all the way.

 

An app can help you learn basic vocabulary, but a human coach at a specialized language center can guide you toward real communication, help you choose the right dialect, teach cultural context, and give you the hours of meaningful interaction you need to speak spontaneously.