Lebanese Arabic
The Arabic of Beirut and of a diaspora spread across four continents, and one of the gentlest spoken varieties to pronounce.
Where it is spoken
Lebanese Arabic is spoken by around five million people in Lebanon and by a diaspora several times that size, concentrated in Brazil, the United States, Canada, Australia and West Africa. It belongs to the Levantine group with Syrian and Palestinian, and speakers of all three understand each other immediately. Lebanese music and television travel well, so the dialect is easy to find outside the country.
How it differs
Lebanese raises long vowels, so the standard beit sits closer to beet, and a final -a often lifts toward -e. The letter qaf is usually a glottal stop, as in Egyptian. French and English words appear freely in ordinary speech. The rhythm of a Lebanese sentence is lighter and quicker than Fusha.
Words you can hear
Each of these is recorded by a native speaker of this dialect. Tap any card to hear it.
A note on the written forms below. Spoken dialects are rarely written down, so most words appear in their standard spelling. Where this dialect has its own written form, it is marked.
Lebanese families abroad are often two or three generations deep, and the dialect thins with each one. A child who hears Lebanese from a grandparent but never sees it written or taught can end up understanding far more than they will say. Giving that child the same words their grandmother uses, in her accent, is the difference between following a conversation and joining it.
Who should learn it
Anyone with Lebanese family, anyone learning for travel in Lebanon, and anyone who wants a Levantine dialect with plenty of music and television to listen to. It works well as a first spoken dialect, because the pronunciation asks less of an English speaker than Maghrebi or Gulf varieties.
Dialects
Hear all seven dialects
PopPond records the same words in Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, Moroccan, Algerian and Fus-ha.