Arabic Learning Resources > Arabic Dialects
Arabic dialects fall into five main groups: Peninsular (Gulf, Saudi, Omani and Yemeni), Mesopotamian (Iraqi), Levantine, Nile Valley (Egyptian and Sudanese) and Maghrebi (North Africa). Egyptian is the most spoken single dialect, with about 119 million speakers. Every Arab country also uses Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) for writing, news and formal speech.
The dialects share their grammar with MSA but not their sounds or everyday words, which is why a learner who knows only MSA gets lost in a casual conversation.
The Arabic dialect groups at a glance
Each dialect below belongs to one of the five groups that dialectologists now use, and the dialects in a group sit next to each other on the map. Speaker figures are total speakers (first and second language) as Wikipedia reports them from Ethnologue, so some are higher than the first-language figures on our individual dialect pages; each figure links to its Ethnologue entry.
| Dialect | Group | Where it is spoken | Speakers | Next door on the map |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Egyptian | Nile Valley | Egypt | 119 million | Sudanese, Levantine, Libyan |
| Sudanese | Nile Valley | Sudan, South Sudan | 52 million | Egyptian, Libyan |
| Levantine | Levantine | Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine | 60 million | Iraqi, Egyptian, Saudi |
| Iraqi | Mesopotamian | Iraq | 32 million | Levantine, Gulf, Saudi |
| Gulf | Peninsular | Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, eastern Saudi Arabia | 11 million | Iraqi, Saudi, Omani |
| Saudi (Najdi, Hejazi) | Peninsular | Saudi Arabia | 19 million Najdi, 11 million Hejazi | Gulf, Yemeni, Levantine |
| Omani | Peninsular | Oman | 3.2 million | Gulf, Yemeni |
| Yemeni | Peninsular | Yemen | 30 million | Saudi, Omani |
| Moroccan | Maghrebi | Morocco | 40 million | Algerian |
| Algerian | Maghrebi | Algeria | 42 million | Moroccan, Tunisian, Libyan |
| Tunisian | Maghrebi | Tunisia | 12.5 million | Algerian, Libyan |
| Libyan | Maghrebi | Libya | 6.1 million | Tunisian, Egyptian |
Iraqi combines Ethnologue's Mesopotamian and North Mesopotamian entries, and Yemeni combines the San'ani, Ta'izzi-Adeni and Hadrami entries. The Maghrebi countries have their own hub, Maghrebi Arabic resources.
The same sentence in six dialects
"I love reading a lot" changes in every dialect, and the word for "a lot" alone takes six different forms. The forms below follow the comparison in Wikipedia's Varieties of Arabic article, with the city each form comes from. Transliteration here is the informal Latin style used across our dialect pages, with an apostrophe for the glottal stop.
| Variety | Arabic | Transliteration | "A lot" is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modern Standard | أنا أحب القراءة كثيرا | ana uhibbu l-qira'ata kathiran | kathiran |
| Egyptian (Cairo) | أنا بحب القراية أوي | ana bahebb el-'eraya awi | awi |
| Levantine (Damascus) | أنا كتير بحب القراية | ana ktir bhebb l-'raye | ktir |
| Iraqi (Baghdad) | آني كلش أحب القراية | ani kullish ahebb lu-qraye | kullish |
| Gulf (Kuwait) | أنا وايد أحب القراءة | ana wayid ahibb il-qira'a | wayid |
| Moroccan (Casablanca) | أنا كنبغي نقرا بزاف | ana kanebghi naqra bezzaf | bezzaf |
| Tunisian (Tunis) | نحب نقرا برشا | nhebb naqra barsha | barsha |
Look at the verbs. Egyptian and Levantine put a b- prefix on the verb (bahebb, bhebb) for the ordinary present tense. Iraqis say "I" as ani, not ana. The two Maghrebi rows mark "I" on the verb with n- (kanebghi, naqra, nhebb), where the eastern dialects and MSA use a- (ahibb, ahebb). For a phrase you can use today, our page on how to say good morning in Arabic dialects works the same way.
How do Arabic dialects differ?
Mostly in sounds and everyday words, much less in grammar. The letter qaf (ق) is the easiest marker to hear: it becomes a glottal stop in Cairo and the Levantine cities, a hard "g" across the Gulf and much of Iraq, and stays "q" in Moroccan cities.
- Egyptian says the letter jim as a hard "g", so jamal (camel) is gamal.
- Iraqi carries Persian, Turkish and Aramaic loanwords, and its "aku / maku" (there is / there isn't) marks a speaker at once.
- Gulf turns kaf into "ch" in some words, so kalb (dog) becomes chalb.
- Maghrebi drops many short vowels and borrows heavily from French and Amazigh.
- Yemeni keeps the "th" and "dh" sounds of classical Arabic that most city dialects lost.
Can speakers of different dialects understand each other?
Neighbors mostly can, and distant dialects often cannot. Wikipedia's summary of the research says nearby varieties are mostly mutually intelligible while faraway ones tend not to be. North Africans understand eastern Arabic better than the reverse, which the same article puts down to the reach of Egyptian and Levantine film and television. Egyptian is among the most widely understood dialects for that reason.
When educated speakers of distant dialects meet, they often move toward MSA and drop their most local words. The same article notes that Arabic speakers call this middle register the "white dialect", اللهجة البيضاء al-lahja al-bayda.
Dialects and Modern Standard Arabic
Arabs read, write and hear the news in MSA, and talk at home and in shops in their dialect. Linguists call that split diglossia. You need MSA to read and a dialect to talk, and our guide on how to start learning Modern Standard Arabic shows where MSA fits in a study plan.
Picking a dialect to learn
We keep the recommendation on a separate page. Our guide on which Arabic dialect to learn scores the main dialects on speakers, reach, media, resources and ease, and says what would change the answer.
Every dialect page on the site
Each page below covers one dialect: how it sounds, how it differs from MSA, and the courses, books and tutors we recommend for it.
Frequently asked questions
How many dialects are there of the Arabic language?
Dialectologists sort spoken Arabic into five main groups: Peninsular, Mesopotamian, Levantine, Nile Valley and Maghrebi. Inside those groups each country, and often each city, has its own variety, and Ethnologue gives many of them separate language codes, such as Najdi and Hejazi in Saudi Arabia. So the count is five groups and dozens of local dialects.
What is the most popular dialect of Arabic?
By speaker count, Egyptian Arabic. Ethnologue puts it at about 84 million first-language speakers and 119 million in total, more than any other single Arabic variety. It is also one of the most widely understood, because Egyptian film, radio and television spread across the Arab world in the 20th century.
Can Arabic dialect speakers understand each other?
Neighbors mostly can, distant dialects often cannot. Speakers of the eastern dialects (Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, Gulf) generally follow each other with some effort. Maghrebi speakers from North Africa understand the eastern dialects better than eastern speakers understand them, largely because Egyptian and Levantine film and television reached North Africa and little traveled the other way.
Should I learn a dialect or Modern Standard Arabic first?
If your goal is conversation, start with a dialect and add MSA later. If your goal is reading, formal writing or religious study, start with MSA. Many learners do both in parallel once they have the alphabet down, since the shared grammar means progress in one helps the other.
Are Arabic dialects written languages?
Traditionally no. Books, newspapers and official documents use Modern Standard Arabic. But dialects are now written informally in texting and on social media, either in Arabic script or in the Latin-letter Arabizi style, so learners see written dialect far more than earlier generations did.