The Arabic they speak in the Gulf isn’t the Arabic in your textbook.

Your welcome offer ends in

You can finish a year of Arabic classes and still not understand local Gulf Arabs. Not because you are bad at languages — because you were taught a different one.

Almost every Arabic course teaches Modern Standard Arabic. MSA is the language of news broadcasts, newspapers and formal speeches. It is a real language and a useful one — but nobody uses it in most of daily life. Nobody gossips in it. Nobody chats in the lift in it.

Walk into an office in Abu Dhabi, Doha or Kuwait, and what you will hear is Khaleeji — Gulf Arabic. Different words. Different grammar. Different intonation.

If you are learning Arabic for the Gulf, starting with MSA is like moving to Madrid and studying Latin.

What happens when you use MSA in the Gulf

You get understood. Then they answer you — and you realize you don't understand the answer.

People switch to English to help you. Which is kind, but it also ends your practice. You stay the guest who tried, not the one who is in on the conversation. And the conversation is where the friendships are, and where the career is: the chit chat before the meeting starts, the joke that tells you how the room really feels, the moment the client or the neighbour decides you are worth the effort.

Three years in the Gulf without the language is three years with the subtitles off.

This course teaches the one they actually speak

GulfArabic.com has been teaching Khaleeji online for more than 20 years. Not MSA with a Gulf accent — the spoken language of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, as it is used.

Here is the whole thing.

Pronunciation first

The sounds English does not have — the ones that make the difference between a word and a different word. You get these right at the start, or you spend years being politely misunderstood.

The Arabic script, in three lessons

Entirely optional — you can do the entire course in transliteration — but most people want to gain literacy. It stops being mysterious faster than you'd think.

Grammar — 30 lessons, in the order you need it

Personal pronouns. Possessives with maal-. The broken plural that textbooks bury on page 200. The construct state, iDaafat. The dual form. Pronoun suffixes. Numbers, cardinal and ordinal. The past tense. Each lesson is one idea, not a chapter.

Vocabulary — 12 units of real situations

Greetings. At the airport. At the market. Professions. The days of the week. In the office. Short descriptive phrases — the small words that make you sound like a person rather than a phrasebook.

Business Talk — 14 lessons

The register you need in a meeting or a government agency. If you are in the Gulf for work, that's the part that pays for the course.

Real Life Gulf Arabic — 11 lessons

Longer pieces with real human content: I Can’t Just Sit. Why Now? I Have Dyslexia. I Feel Like a Winner. This is where it stops being exercises and starts being language.

Two things that make it stick

Audio on almost (99%) every word. Not only the dialogues — the words. Arabic has sounds you cannot learn from a page, and a transliteration that looks obvious is usually wrong. Click on any audio and say it back.

Short quizzes throughout. In order to have better recall you need to repeat the new words and get tested on them. Every section tests you.

Work at your own pace, on any device, as often as you like. No timetable, no class to miss, nobody waiting for you to catch up.

What subscribers say

“Your website has been very helpful for me in communicating with local Emiratis, so thank you for that!”

“I thoroughly enjoyed it [GulfArabic.com] as I am trying to fluently learn Arabic. I want to thank you for your work in creating a great resource for learning Gulf Arabic as I have tried countless other sources which have not been as good. I plan on supplementing learning MSA/Fus*ha with the content on your website as I intend on moving back to the Gulf (I lived in the U.A.E) to work after university, God willing.

Once again, thank you for such a great website. I’ve managed to impress my Khaliji [Gulf Arab] friends with the stuff I’ve learned so far.”

“I made heaps of friends thanks to your course.”

Who this is for

• You are moving to the Gulf region or you are already there
• You work with Gulf clients or colleagues and would prefer to improve your relations with them
• You have studied Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and found it's not really what people are speaking
• You have married into a Gulf Arab family and you're keen on taking part in the conversation at dinner

If what you need is classical Arabic for Qur’anic study or academic work, that is Modern Standard Arabic, while this is a different path. It's worth knowing before you start, so that you invest your time in the right kind of Arabic you need.

The offer

Honest answers

Will I be fluent in a year?

No, and no course can promise that honestly. What you will have is the sound system, the grammar that matters and several hundred words in the situations you are actually in — enough that people stop switching to English.

I do not know the alphabet. Is that a problem?

No, not at all. Every lesson is transliterated. There is a lesson on the script for whenever you need it.

Which country’s Arabic is this?

Gulf Arabic — Khaleeji — shared across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. There are local differences, much as there are between Glasgow and Bristol, or Texas and New York. You will be understood throughout the Gulf.

Can I cancel?

Yes, from your PayPal account, at any time. Your access continues until the period you have paid for ends.

How do I get in once I have paid?

Your login is emailed to you as soon as PayPal confirms the payment, usually within a minute or two, and you are signed in on the spot.