Learn Lebanese Arabic
Lebanese Arabic is a dialect of Levantine Arabic mostly used in Lebanon. It is predominantly a spoken language, while Modern Standard Arabic is usually used in formal writing. Most Lebanese speakers are also fluent in either French or English which means that words from these languages get mixed into Lebanese. Lebanese also borrows from Aramaic and Turkish. There is some ongoing debate about whether Lebanese is a dialect of Arabic at all, or a separate language which descends from Aramaic and borrows heavily from Arabic vocabulary.
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Where is it spoken?
Lebanon
Number of speakers
5,500,000
Language family
Afro-Asiatic
Semitic
Central Semitic
Arabic
Levantine Arabic
Fun facts — Arabic (Lebanese)
- One of the most common ways to say thank you is 'merci', borrowed from French.
- The 'a' at the end of words tends to be pronounced like a soft 'e'. So 'rain' شتاء is pronounced shete instead of the formal Arabic shita’.
- The guttural 'q' sound is replaced by a glottal stop, so 'coffee' (قهوة) or 'qahwa' in Classical Arabic becomes ’ahwe' in Lebanese.
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