Why? ليش؟
I used this up for about a year when I was first learning Levantine Arabic, and I keep asking myself, why? Why would a native speaker deliberately pronounce verbs incorrectly? Why would he pronounce the final alif on the second and third person plural when this is never pronounced? Why would he pronounce the verbs so strangely? Why would he pronounce انتهينا - and why would the harakat show it to be pronounced - ‘intáhyana’ instead of ‘intahéena’? My friends who are native speakers and teachers of Levantine Arabic listen to it and shake their heads, saying no, this is wrong. They can’t understand why anyone would pronounce the verbs like this either. I still sometimes open the app as a quick reference, knowing that the spelling and pronunciation are sometimes correct, sometimes incorrect. I know enough Levantine Arabic to be able to tell, at least sometimes, when a word is spelt and pronounced incorrectly. I still wonder why. Why?
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Overall great
The interface is good and generally speaking everything else is. There’s only a few issues, I noticed in the audio pronunciation it’s not how they are actually pronounced in this dialect. For example it pronounces the ق instead of ء. A suggestion as well is that the app should include an example sentence for each word. Overall great app tho.
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Missing feature
I think this app’s only missing an important feature which is the litteral reading, this can be really helpful for prononciation for someone who doesn’t read arabic.
Problem with the audio
Problem with the audio playback. Please fix. Thank you
Response from developer
Hi, I have just updated the app to fix the problem you encountered. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for bringing it to my attention. In the future send an email to arcopodev@gmail.com
This is a gem
This is the best app ever for anyone interested in learning and practicing Levantine spoken Arabic.
1. It is very resourceful - has most used verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions etc. to build simple and complex sentences.
2. It is very easy to use - the tool is very handy and allows the user to look up words rapidly and save some ‘favourites’ which can be accessed via shortcuts. Looking up words is no longer a rate limiting step and this minimises the chances of giving up practicing Arabic (like 20 other times in my life) because it’s too much of a hassle to build sentences.
3. Great neat graphics
Thank you Timothy!
1. It is very resourceful - has most used verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions etc. to build simple and complex sentences.
2. It is very easy to use - the tool is very handy and allows the user to look up words rapidly and save some ‘favourites’ which can be accessed via shortcuts. Looking up words is no longer a rate limiting step and this minimises the chances of giving up practicing Arabic (like 20 other times in my life) because it’s too much of a hassle to build sentences.
3. Great neat graphics
Thank you Timothy!
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First impressions
A pro to this app is that the interface is better and cleaner looking than Lisaan Masry (a primarily Egyptian Arabic app) but I hope future versions will be more polished with true recordings of North/South Levantine Arabic and some more common words and example sentences. I do like the notes you can add which I’m taking from Wiktionary and when I get my Levantine books.
I know native audio recordings would be a slog, but they would honestly take this app to the next level and it would be one of the few comprehensive and premier Levantine apps with others being pretty average. First thing I noticed was the audio is not great for the $12 price tag and seems to use what may be the standard text-to-speech Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) pronunciation — at the same time I guess it is technically better than nothing if you’re not confident with the script.
I am still a beginner in Arabic (having started and stopped multiple times) but I thought Levantine speakers don’t pronounce ق? Most dialects seem to swallow the sound or it becomes like a glottal stop or أ but the words I’ve been trying on here pronounce ق clearly.
Will update this when I explore the app further. I do want to be fair and if I’m alerted to something I didn’t realise I will update that but as a reviewer it’s also my ‘job’ to inform prospective buyers of things that they may like or not like about an app and how to improve it.
PS - I plan to add as much as I can to Forvo North/South Levantine Arabic dictionaries so we can hopefully get some external native speaker audio in the meantime. The Forvo app is a godsend to language learners and definitely recommend it when you can’t find how to pronounce words. Users add a word then native speakers pronounce them. It’s basically a collaborative world dictionary.
شكرا كتير
I know native audio recordings would be a slog, but they would honestly take this app to the next level and it would be one of the few comprehensive and premier Levantine apps with others being pretty average. First thing I noticed was the audio is not great for the $12 price tag and seems to use what may be the standard text-to-speech Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) pronunciation — at the same time I guess it is technically better than nothing if you’re not confident with the script.
I am still a beginner in Arabic (having started and stopped multiple times) but I thought Levantine speakers don’t pronounce ق? Most dialects seem to swallow the sound or it becomes like a glottal stop or أ but the words I’ve been trying on here pronounce ق clearly.
Will update this when I explore the app further. I do want to be fair and if I’m alerted to something I didn’t realise I will update that but as a reviewer it’s also my ‘job’ to inform prospective buyers of things that they may like or not like about an app and how to improve it.
PS - I plan to add as much as I can to Forvo North/South Levantine Arabic dictionaries so we can hopefully get some external native speaker audio in the meantime. The Forvo app is a godsend to language learners and definitely recommend it when you can’t find how to pronounce words. Users add a word then native speakers pronounce them. It’s basically a collaborative world dictionary.
شكرا كتير
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Response from developer
Hi, my work on the Levantine learning apps has moved over to Learn Levantine Arabic. If you send me an email at arcopodev@gmail.com I’ll give you free access to that app as this one isn’t really being updated any more.
Great app
Awesome app — please add a flashcard function!! And/or allow export to anki-style spaced repetition apps
Thank you for making my life easier!
This app has saved me so much time in my spoken Arabic course, which uses transliteration instead of Arabic script. I find the original Arabic much less confusing, so I have been changing the words back. So far, so good! The verb conjugations also are especially helpful to me as a learner. The only words I haven’t been able to find in the app so far are related to feeling sick, neither the verb nor the adjective. Was I looking in the wrong place? Thanks again!
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Hopefully useful for you too!
I made this app to help me with learning spoken Arabic. And whenever I forget a word I can check it on here. Hopefully it can be useful to you too, and get in touch if you have any feedback or issues :)
Update
It won’t let me open the categories.
Response from developer
Hi there, I’ve now fixed the problem where you couldn’t open the categories. Thank you for alerting me to that issue. Look out for the update in the next couple of days. And I’ve updated the app with audio pronunciation. Please get in touch if you want to ask any more questions or have any problems - at arcopodev@gmail.com