Like many students, when I enrolled in my first Arabic class, I was instructed to buy two books: Al-Kitaab (the classic 1st year Arabic textbook) and the Hans Wehr dictionary. These two resources helped me pass my Arabic 101 class, but weren’t very useful when I started delving into dialect vocabulary words and real conversations. In my experience, there’s no perfect Levantine Arabic dictionary (contact us if you’ve found one!) but there are many excellent resources.

Below is a list of our favorites dictionaries with links to their web versions. Many also have an app that you can download to your phone from your preferred app store.

Lughatuna

Lughatuna (aka The Living Arabic Project) is a dictionary site that goes beyond Levantine words to include pretty much all of the MENA/SWANA Arabic dialects. Lughatuna is especially useful because it yields multiple translations for each word and includes a couple examples of the word in a sentence. It also shows the root of each word, even for dialect entries, which is surprisingly rare for many of the online dictionaries I’ve found.

Reverso Context

Some may disagree, but I had to put Reverso Context towards the top of the list because it’s my go-to Arabic dictionary. It tends to have far more dialect words than conventional dictionaries and gives examples of how a word is used in a variety of real-world sentences, which is useful for understanding context and connotations. Reverso Context also offers nearby words, so, when I’ve typed a letter incorrectly or searched for a conjugated verb, the right answer will often still pop up. The app does have a lot of ads but there’s a premium version available, or you can use the browser version with an ad blocker.

المعاني

I’ve always appreciated that المعاني (“the meaning”) app and website were built for an English-speaking and Arabic-speaking audience and allow users to switch the interface to their preferred language. For an extra challenge, try searching for words using the Arabic interface to learn new Arabic words with a similar meaning. Another great feature (pictured here to the left) is the original text section that shows different words and phrases related to the search term. This gives the option to expand and build upon the original search term even in the English navigation.

Arabic Words

Arabic Words has a more limited collection of words than the other dictionaries on this list, but the unique accessory features on the site warrant it a spot on the list. Arabic Words is a growing dictionary of words primarily in the Lebanese accent but including a lot of vocabulary in the Egyptian and Gulf dialects as well. Next to each word is a visual indicator of which dialects use the word. This has been a helpful resource to me in deciphering which words in my vocabulary are specific to the Levantine dialect and which ones are used more generally across dialects. Another feature I like is that the words are tagged with different categories. You can click on the tag and it takes you to what is essentially a vocabulary list of words in that same category (example here). You can also submit words to add to the dictionary to help Arabic Words expand.

Google Translate

It pains me to rank Google Translate in the top 5, but their repertoire of Arabic dialect words has significantly improved over the years. The app also provides audio recordings - albeit in a stiff, formal accent - and useful tools like translating from pictures of text or transcribing from audio. The main downside of Google Translate is that formal and dialect words are mixed together so, if you search for a word in English, it’s hard to know whether the result is spoken or written Arabic.

Bonus Dictionary:

If, after all these suggestions, you’re still missing Hans Weir dictionary, the Arabic Almanac app by Omar Jahangir is a digitized version of the classic dictionary. It is free and available offline which makes it a convenient addition to your smartphone. The Almanac also lets you search for words by their root, so unlike the hard-copy Hans Weir, you don’t have to memorize the Arabic alphabet!