Finally! Today I published Arabic Genie’s Magic Key To The Arabic Alphabet. It contains a unique method for learning the Arabic letters that hasn’t been published anywhere before. Instead of rote memorization, the method works through the use of mnemonics, or memory aids, that anchor the shape and sound of … Continue reading →

Note: if you are looking for love in Arabic please click here. Today I received the following email from Paige, a reader of this blog: Hey! I’ve been searching all over the web for a translation. I want to get “faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love” … Continue reading →

The Arabic writing system is often said to be hellishly difficult. What if you could learn to read and write Arabic painlessly and within only a few hours? Let me tell you a story from my own experience of learning the Arabic alphabet. In fact I was enrolled in an … Continue reading →

Arabic vocalization or تشكيل (tashkeel) is used to indicate the short vowels (a, i, u) that are usually not written in Arabic. There are three short vowel sings or حركات (harakaat) and a few more additional signs to indicate the absence of a vowel, the prolongation of an alif and … Continue reading →

I’m always on the look-out for ways to watch Arabic TV online. Today I found some excellent resources that I want to share with you. First up is Zattoo – a program that streams a number of TV channels over the internet. Luckily, Al-Jazeera Arabic is also available and the … Continue reading →

Today I received another request for a translation of a few English phrases into Arabic for the purpose of an Arabic tattoo: Hi Max, I have been reading your blog from australia and its fantastic, i really enjoy it. I noticed that you did a translation for one of your … Continue reading →

Today a reader sent me a request for two specific translations of English words into Arabic: Hi Max! I am writing you from Hungary, I have seen your e-mail adress in your webpage. I have a problem, exactly that I want an arabic tattoo, but I am a bit unknown … Continue reading →

Egyptian Arabic is spoken by around 76 million people and thus the most widely-spoken Arabic dialect. Given the fact that Egyptian TV and cinema are ubiquitous in the Middle East, it is also the most widely-understood dialect. Taken together, these two considerations add a lot of weight in favor of … Continue reading →

Here are my top ten reasons for learning Arabic: 1. Arabic is spoken by more than 280 million people as a native language. This makes it the fifth (or fourth if Hindi and Urdu are counted as one language) most widely spoken language of the world. Being able to talk … Continue reading →

There is an interesting article on the BBC News page detailing the experience of one of their correspondents in learning Arabic in Damascus. While I certainly applaud his efforts, I nevertheless have to remark on some inconsistencies in his article. In the article, the author writes: But however modest our … Continue reading →

While Arabic tattoos can be aesthetically pleasing if the right calligraphy is used, there are a huge number of cases where neither the person getting the tattoo done nor the tattooist have the slightest idea of Arabic. The result is often disastrous: incorrect or ugly Arabic writing. I’ll show you … Continue reading →

Arabic tattoos are definitively in fashion in the world of the rich and the famous. And I don’t mean temporary tattoos done with henna. This is perhaps surprising, because there are hardly any tattoos to be seen in the Arab World. In the West, however, tattoos have come a long … Continue reading →