Simple Arabic, similar words to English and Hebrew

Arabic is written from right to left, the same as Hebrew. 

Arabic & Hebrew

Two languages for the price of one

English - Arabic - Hebrew

day - Araabic yam - Hebrew yom as in Yom Kippur the day (of) Atonement, which is a fasting day\

friend - Arabic sadiq

night - -Arabic laylah - Hebrew layla pronounced lie-la, laylah tov is good ight, literally night good with the adjective second 

no - la - lo

A few words

THE SAME!

bank - bank

mall - mall

supermarket - supermarket

Arabic - English

ana - I

English - Arabic

I - ana

How useful is Arabic to the traveller? It is one of the six languages of the UN.

Arabic is an official language of these countries:

• Algeria
• Bahrain
• Comoros
• Chad
• Djibouti
• Egypt
• Eritrea
• Gaza and The West Bank
• Iraq
• Israel
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Libya
• Mauritania
• Morocco
• Oman
• Pakistan
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Somaliland
• Sudan
• Syria
• Tunisia
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

It is also a national language of:

• Mali
• Somalia
• Senegal

Useful Resources

Basic conversational words and sentences

1 https://preply.com/en/blog/basic-arabic-words/

2 Earworms CD with small print booklet, and online support (from Berlitz - Earworms CDs are no longer available new, Feb 2025, but second hand on ebay. The boxed set is useful if you have a CD player in your car, or want to look at the booklet when travelling by bus or train or revising late at night in a good light.)

3 Wikivoyage Phrasebook arabic 

https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Arabic_phrasebook

The Arabic phrasebook deals with Modern Standard Arabic. See the Egyptian Arabic phrasebook, Jordanian Arabic phrasebook, Moroccan Arabic phrasebook, Lebanese Arabic phrasebook, or Tunisian Arabic phrasebook for Arabic dialects relating to those countries and regions.

http://www.modernstandardarabic.com/cognate-list-of-arabic-and-english-words/

https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=16218