Reddit reviews Arabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (English and Arabic Edition)

So- in terms of learning Arabic, Rosetta Stone offers at least one program, of varying levels, but unless you only want to learn enough Arabic to order food and hail a taxi, it's not really sufficient at all. In my personal opinion, Arabic is a very hard language for Westerners to learn, and my biggest struggle throughout the course was the very rigid grammatical structure. Even with teachers in front of me and the availability of a tutor, Arabic grammatical structure has always been difficult for me, especially in reproducing it. And for this, it's definitely important to be learning it in person, I think, to query "Why?" and "How does such and such fit?"

I think it would be very difficult to learn any amount of useful Arabic solely through online learning. That said, it's certainly not impossible. A really useful text would be "All The Arabic You Never Learned the First Time Around" by James Price, but it's no longer in print. The PDF is available online (at that site) but to buy the book is $300 (which KILLS ME! because I had three copies of it from DLI and don't know where any of them are).

But before you can dive into that, it really is necessary for you to understand the script. The script can seem overwhelming, but I learned it in a matter of a couple days. It's really simple once you figure out how to read from right to left instead of left to write. I can't point you to a specific website to use, but Google will yield you a TON of sites, and YouTube has videos that go over the sound and look of each letter. If you treat Arabic writing like cursive (nearly all letters connect to each other in a given word) it's much easier. When I first started I would write the corresponding English letter (when there was one) over each Arabic letter and accustom myself to reading hte English letters backwards, eventually transitioning to just reading the Arabic letters themselves backwords.

Once you have the alphabet down, you'll need to learn diacritics (little marks that indicate what vowel sound something makes), and for this, an in person class is really strongly a plus. Diacritics only exist in the Qu'ran and when you're learning Arabic, afterwards they disappear and just become implied (a native automatically knows where they would go and as a student it sort of becomes second nature as well).

Once you can read simple words and sentences, then you'll be able to replicate them online (I use Arabic Keyboard and copy and paste them into Google Translate to get a (reasonably accurate) translation of a word you do not know.

Similarly, once you can read Arabic words (whether you know their definition or not) you should get two dictionaries. An Arabic to English dictionary, specifically Hans Wehr makes the best Arabic-English dictionary in the world (in my opinion) and an English to Arabic dictionary, I prefer Al-Mawrid and the linked one there is the cheapest Arabic-English dictionary I know (as well as being used by the Defense Language Institute).

From there, I would strongly suggest finding someone who gives Arabic lessons or enrolling in an Arabic course. If you're done with college or can't take it at your school, look into a community college. MANY of them offer at least one or two Arabic classes, and those would be extremely helpful in getting your feet wet at learning Arabic.

I hope some of this helped!

Edit: final note- there are actually several subreddits dedicated to learning Arabic, but I have not used any of them. You might try stopping by /r/learn_arabic/ and see if they have any advice!

Hans Wehr Dictionary & it's online searchable version

Wall of text incoming:

Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum Al-'Arabiyya (al-Kitaab generally) is nearly universal for beginning and intermediate Arabic learning in the States. There are three books, and it teaches fusha, which is media Arabic. All educated Arabs are proficient in this dialect, though it is rarely used outside formal settings.

Only one dictionary you'll need: Hans Wehr is the Arabic student's bible. You won't find much use for it off the bat because it's not strictly alphabetical, it's alphabetical by root. So until you learn to spot the root of a word it'll be hard to look anything up. It's also only Arabic-to-English, but al-Kitaab provides more than enough vocab to get you on your feet and Google Translate can fill in gaps (ONLY use Google Translate for individual words, then Hans Wehr to verify; Google Translate will botch sentences).

The most widely understood dialect would most likely be Egyptian, though oddly it is also one of the weirdest/most divergent from Classical Arabic due to Coptic influence. Fortunately, because it's so popular, there are lots of materials out there. That said, probably best to start with fusha, and branch out into dialects after you have a good handle on it. It'll help you understand where a lot of dialectical words come from. Additionally, al-Kitaab has a small Egyptian lesson at the end of each chapter, so you can get some basic exposure without having to functionally learn two languages at once.

Farther down the line, you can get Media Arabic, which is a collection of short articles by topic, with little exercises and loads of really useful vocab. Not strictly necessary if understanding the news isn't in your wheelhouse, but if you're serious about learning Arabic it's a really good intermediate/advanced step.

If you get serious about Egyptian, Pimsleur's Egyptian course is a good jump start, but also not really necessary and hard to do right because of the time commitment. It gets expensive, too, so make sure you're going to use it.

Some of my favorite books for Egyptian come from the American University in Cairo Press:

the Kallimni Arabi series is basically al-Kitaab for Egyptian Arabic. Very useful place to start.

the Arabi Liblib series
gets really into the weeds of how Egyptian speakers communicate. They're basically dictionaries of dialectical adjectives, idioms, and proverbs.

In addition to books, check out Memrise. It's a great vocab tool, and entirely user-generated, so there's a lot of content.

I also like to listen to BBC Arabic Radio. It's 24/7 so you can just pick it up whenever. Both fusha and various dialects. Exposure is extremely important in language learning, and even moreso when learning a language as alien to English as Arabic is.

On top of all this, just putz around on YouTube and Twitter. Arabs are all over social media and it's not hard to get exposure there.

As for dictionaries, I'm sure you've heard of Hans Wehr—it's less of a dictionary and more of an encyclopedia of information on Arabic roots and word forms.

Another good dictionary I use on a daily basis is Aratools Arabic-English Dictionary. It's concise enough to be useful, but it gives helpful information like the root of the word, and it's able to detect the inflection of a particular word.

Not exactly...there's the al-mawrid app for iPhone/Android that at least will sometimes link to words from the same jithr. I know you're looking for a website, but I can't recommend Hans Wehr dictionary enough. It has exactly that function, excellent organization of words via jithr and wizn. I've found it to be an invaluable resource!

No problem! Also, drop the short vowels. They're good for just starting out, but they aren't used at all in most all Arabic. Also, pick up one of these as soon as possible, they're worth their weight in gold. What program are you using to learn, if you don't mind me asking?

Sure. If you don't particularly need the older 3rd editon, this version is a bit cheaper: http://www.amazon.com/Arabic-English-Dictionary-Modern-Written-Arabic/dp/0879500034/

Although, I have the paper version, and end up leaving that one on the shelf and using the online version instead. It is both easier to look up words (type in the root and voila), and also more portable assuming you have a smartphone.

Honestly, neither of these are great sources, but if you've already invested money I recommend completing both and not worrying to much about the discrepancies, treat them as two dialects of the same language. You'll still learn something and you can revise your understanding later on with more experience. I've listed some better resources below. Hope that helps.

Here's a place to start.

If you don't already have a dictionary I recommend this one if you have a good grasp of English. You can also find it the some libraries.

For Listening you can use BBC as well as many songs, Al Jazeera is great too. I recommend finding a news item in English to familiarize yourself with the topic then reading the same story in Arabic.

I also recommend Duo Linguo for learning the basics.