The Book to Take to Beirut, Amman or Damascus

One dialect, four countries

Levantine Arabic is what people speak across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Learn it once and it travels with you through all of them — and through most Arabic music, television and film besides.

Learn Arabic For Your Habibi teaches exactly that variety, in forty pages.

Sized for a trip

• Read it on the flight. Forty A4 pages, no script to learn first, everything in clear transliteration.
• Carry it in a bag. A paperback you can mark up, unlike a phone you would rather not hold out in a market.
• Use it the day you land. Greetings and their replies, numbers, directions, the restaurant, shopping — the sections a traveller reaches for first.

Better than the standard travel phrasebook

Two differences matter on the ground.

The replies are printed with the phrases, so when the shopkeeper answers your greeting you know what you are hearing and what to say next. And every line is marked (m) and (f), so you are not accidentally using a form meant for someone else — something generic travel books almost universally skip.

Nineteen sections in total, going well past tourist basics into family, work, weather, the household and everyday conversation.

Details

A 40-page A4 paperback by Daria Okhrimenko, written for complete beginners with no previous Arabic. AED 169, delivered free anywhere in the UAE in two to four days — order a week or so before you fly.

Take Learn Arabic For Your Habibi with you. If you are still choosing a dialect for the region, start with which Arabic should you learn.