Contact Learn Arabic language Support

I am learning Arabic, so I downloaded Drops. Drops says the words in the language you’re learning, and shows the written word in both your native language and the one you’re learning. There are different exercises, like matching and spelling. Using Duolingo, the pronunciations were different each time I heard a word. They didn’t teach me the alphabet in order and they only taught the sounds instead of the names of the letters. However, there are a few changes I would make to Drops. First of all, I would add a microphone so you could practice saying the words. Second, I would make one of the exercises writing sentences. For example, it would say, “Yo soy una mujer” and you would have to type in “I am a woman”. This app is good for learning vocabulary and correct pronunciation. Sentence structure is not one of the things you will learn from Drops. I think the best way to go is by using a couple language apps because no app is going to have everything. Drops and Duolingo are a good combination to use, especially using Arabic, since many language apps don’t include Arabic. That said, I still enjoy using this app and learned a lot from it.

One day I hope to see this company make categories to learn words specific to the various dialects of Arabic. This app teaches MSA (Modern Standard Arabic). This is great if you intend to watch a political speech, but it leaves you unprepared to deal with daily conversations. Talking to a local Arab on the streets in MSA is almost the equivalent of talking to your English friends in Shakespearean English. It just sound funny because it’s so overly formal. Many words and pronunciations are different within the dialects. The two biggest dialects are Leventine and Egyptian. Khaleeji Gulf is popular as well, and very hard to find study material for. Add these dialects and that’ll just be there icing on the cake for this amazing app, since most apps focus purely on MSA. People would probably buy the full version in masses just for that selling point alone since most people learning Arabic struggle to find decent study material for dialects after they get done ironing out the basics of MSA.

I loved this app for learning the alphabet, but I’m very disappointed that it doesn’t use the Arabic script during word learning. It is not useful for me to learn to spell the romanized words — I want to be able to learn the language and read and write. After the alphabet, we are thrown in to learning words without going over enough details for letter learning, and I really wish we were able to spell words out one letter at a time to truly learn the pronunciations and spellings. I hope this happens in a future update. I love the interface and the animations — the app is very fun otherwise!