Everything You Need to Know About Levantine Arabic

 

A Quick Overview of Levantine Arabic

Levantine Arabic, or Eastern Arabic, is an Afro-Asiatic -> Semitic -> Central Semitic -> Arabic dialect, spoken in the Levant region by approximately 30 million people, according to Ethnologue. This includes Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Speakers can be found in other areas across the Levant, such as eastern Turkey, Iraq, and Israel.

About the Levant

The origin of the word “Levant” is the French word “rising” that is used to describe where the sun rises. This referred to the eastern part of the Mediterranean such as Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and other parts of Asia Minor.

After World War I Syria and Lebanon were given the name “Levant States” by the French and to this day people will sometimes refer to those two countries as the Levant States.

Levantine Arabic vs Modern Standard Arabic

Like with most Arabic dialects, the complications brought about by Modern Standard Arabic grammar and phonology, and syntax has been simplified.

According to Leslie J. McLoughlin (author of Colloquial Levantine Arabic) cases are pretty much omitted and verb suffixes are far fewer than in MSA.

How to Learn Levantine Arabic

If you’re looking to learn Levantine Arabic, you may first consider why? What is the purpose of learning this Arabic variant? Yes, it’s a commonly asked question and entirely overlooked for new language learners.

Are you learning Levantine Arabic to impress your partner? Are you discovering it to speak with your family? Are you learning it for work? This is important for Arabic, mainly because if you learn Levantine Arabic, you may be disappointed that your intended audience speaks a different variant. People from Morocco may not understand you immediately, especially if you’re starting out and your pronunciation and accent aren’t great. However, this shouldn’t discourage you.

Levantine Arabic is a widely spoken dialect throughout the Arab world. Many films and songs are produced in this dialect. Various Arabic speakers have adopted so many words and trivial vocabulary. This is one of the beauties of the internet age.

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