Free Arabic learning resources
42 free resources, checked and categorised.
No trials, no paywalls, no sign-up required.
The first decision in Arabic matters more than any resource choice: Modern Standard Arabic or a spoken dialect. MSA is the language of news, books and formal writing, and almost nobody speaks it at home. A dialect — Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf — is what conversation actually happens in. Most people want both eventually; starting with both at once is what stalls learners.
The script is less trouble than it looks and takes a couple of weeks. Short vowels are usually unwritten, which means reading fluency depends on already knowing the word — so vocabulary and reading grow together rather than one enabling the other.
Root-and-pattern morphology is Arabic's great efficiency: once you recognise a three-letter root, whole families of related words open up at once. It is worth learning that system explicitly and early, because it turns vocabulary from memorisation into pattern recognition.
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A YouTube channel for learning grammar.
An experimental typography/illustration project transforming the Arabic words into the shapes of their meanings.
A YouTube playlist from the channel Arabic 101 (https://www.youtube.com/@Arabic101).
Free comics in Arabic (only 2 so far).
Same as above, but it's English-Arabic this time.
English-Russian Instagram page for Arabic learners.
Al Jazeera platform for learning Arabic.
Arabic lessons with audio and exercises.
Free Arabic lessons for both beginners and advanced learners.
(“Arab world's largest open platform for books”) - Arabic literature to read online or to download as a pdf file for free.
A YouTube playlist from the channel Arabic 101 (https://www.youtube.com/@Arabic101)
An Arabic-English dictionary from the XIX century, in case you'd like to read the Koran or classic Arabic literature.
An Instagram account for learning Jordanian Arabic. There's even a site available but it needs a subscription after 7 days free trial.
Native speaker's Instagram account - learning resources and more.
A German-many languages dictionary.
A private Facebook group for learning Egyptian Arabic.
Polish-Arabic Quizlet course.
A website/app for mobile and tablet where you can learn different Arabic dialect, grammar and comprehension through all the skills and all the levels.
The online version of the Russian-Arabic dictionary.
Learn it there, practise it here
Free resources are great for input — reading, listening, explanations. They are weaker at the two things that actually move you forward: speaking Arabic out loud, and remembering what you met once. That is what OwnSlides is for.
Say it out loud
Talk to an AI tutor that answers back, or join a live room with other learners and native speakers.
Practise what you read
Turn a grammar point or article into exercises, so it moves from recognised to usable.
Keep the words
Save new words to My Words and let spaced repetition bring them back before you forget them.
This directory began from a community-built list of free language resources — a year of collecting and checking by Joanna (u/chlebka) and dozens of contributors who suggested links, shared freely. See the original list. We have since expanded, re-checked and re-categorised it, and we keep the per-resource credits where the original list recorded them.