Brilliant lesson! I certainly hope I won't need to apologize too often when we're in Lebanon later this year ...

Incidentally, I was feeling really bold the other day and decided to try to watch parts of the movie "Caramel" (not sure you're familiar with it) in Levantine Arabic. Well, I still have a long way to go to understand everything that's being said, but ArabicPod's podcasts have certainly helped me pick up a lot of the local vocab! I was surprised to discover how many French expressions have slipped into the language: in the film, "bonjour" is often used in greeting, followed by اهلا. Is this fact or fiction?

Thank you all again for this wonderful educational and cultural experience.

In the Sham area (Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan), just Lebanese use many Fresh terms in their daily life. The other countries use just Arabic.

Pleased to see all of this activity with ArabicPod and am very happy to be renewing a twelve-month premium subscription today. Money very well-spent. Kudos for the great work everyone!

I have started studying some cds that focus on Eastern Arabic.
but I am a Premium member with Aribic pod also because you guys speak MSA type Arabic which is the Araibic of the educated Arabs.
And I am also learnic Quranic Arabic on a religious web site.
I have learned the most from Arabic pod because you guys have a weelrounded site with written and spoken.

hey guys it's elias i'm so glad that ur enjoying the lebanese dialects.
by the karen that's right we use alot of french in lebanon even english .

by rhe way karen *

how many names do they have for the dialects spoken in lebanon and syria.
lebanese, shams, levatine, eastern....

Im learning eastern spoken arabic so I can visit lebanon or Syria and maybe Egypt. Those are about the only countries an American can visit and not be put on a watch list when he returns home.

Super lesson! I've been watching a Syrian TV series (well, actually a Turksih series dubbed into the Syrian dialect) and I seem to recall hearing the expression ولا يهمِك several times but I didn't know what it meant.

On a side note, will all the Levantine lessons be at the beginner level? At some point it might be useful to have a lesson about how the dialects connect to al-fu97a and/or how they are related to each other. For example, I read somewhere that the present continuous marker عم that is used in Syrian comes from the fu9Ha word عمل (work/do). I'm just starting to realise now that the dialects and al-fu97a aren't as far apart, linguistically, as they first seemed to be to me.

Thanks for your comments, Jayrag. Yikes - A watch list ...!

Hi Serena,

Elias and I will will continue to draw connections between Fu97a and dialect in the Levantine lessons, but we don't do it all the time, because then it starts to become more of an intellectual exercise and less of an actual lesson in speaking.

As you continue to study Arabic, you yourself will naturally make the connections between the dialects you study and the mother tongue. Part of the fun of studying both is discovering how they are related.

ولا يهمك means don't concern yourself and apart from some slight pronunciation differences, it's exactly the same in dialect and standard.

If you have any follow-up questions, we're here to answer them.

So, going by this lesson, if I want to say:

'You dropped your book' (m) ,

would it be --> waqa3 kitaabak minak?

Does "Sorry" work in Palestine too, or would you use "aasif"?

Hello,
At present I'm doing the "Trial Lessons" and must say enjoying the "Beginner" content. I am starting to believe that possibly, finally, I have found a site on line where I can actually learn to speak Arabic! Where I'm located and my present circumstances
do not allow me to take actual one-on-one lessons, so with the wealth of on line material for Arabic learners and my Pimsleur CDs it will all help, I believe, to get there!

Ahlan britmic, thanks for sharing your thoughts. We hope you'll finally learn to speak Arabic with us! Let us know how you get on.

I love this. I recomended this site to everyone I know who is interested in leraning arabic.
I want to learn the sham dialect because Im engaged with a Palestinian. Its really amazing guys. Its not enough to say shukran, yislamo edek, im really grateful for all ur effort and materials. Thank u very much kaman marra!