العربية
Lingo7 lets you read books with a translation under every sentence in 49 languages. Arabic is not one of them yet. Ask for it below, and see what adding it takes and what reading Arabic involves.
Lingo7 does not read Arabic yet: the app has no Arabic dictionary, audio or books, and its reader still has to be mirrored for right-to-left text. Arabic is on the shortlist of languages to add. Leave your email to vote; we add the most requested languages first and write to you once, when Arabic is ready.
We add the most requested languages first. Leave your email and we'll write to you once, when Arabic is ready.
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The demo below is the live reader with a German book. Arabic would work the same way once it is added.
Spoken in: The Middle East and North Africa, official in more than 20 countries
The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters, all consonants; three of them, alif, waw and ya, also write the long vowels a, u and i. Letters join inside a word and change shape with their position, with up to four forms each (initial, medial, final and isolated). Six letters (ا د ذ ر ز و) join only to the letter before them, which leaves gaps inside words that beginners often take for word breaks. There are no capital letters.
Text runs right to left, but numbers inside it run left to right, with the largest place value on the left, as in English. The digits depend on the region: the Maghreb uses 0 to 9, while the Arab east mostly writes Eastern Arabic numerals (٠١٢٣٤). Fully vowelled texts carry two more signs a reader needs early: shadda, a small w-shape that doubles a consonant, and tanwin, a doubled vowel mark that adds a final -n.
Almost everything in print is Modern Standard Arabic. The spoken dialects appear in writing mainly on social media, in blogs and in the dialogue of some novels, and a few Egyptian novels are written entirely in dialect. Many Arabic dictionaries are ordered by root rather than by spelling, so مدرسة (school) is found under d-r-s, and finding the root is the first step of a lookup.
There is no date yet. We add the most requested languages first, and Arabic needs the work described on this page. Leave your email in the form and we will write to you once, when Arabic is ready.
Not yet. Lingo7 has no Arabic dictionary, audio or shelf of books, so a Arabic book would not get the sentence-by-sentence translation and word lookups the app is built on. The 49 languages it does read are listed on the home page.
One vote per email address per language. The count on this page shows a number once at least 10 people have asked, and refreshes within a minute of a new vote. Your email is stored only to tell you when Arabic launches, and deleted whenever you ask at support@lingoseven.com.
Arabic is joined in print as well as in handwriting, and each letter takes the form that fits its place in the word: initial, medial, final or isolated. The core of the letter usually stays recognizable, so the four forms take less time to learn than it sounds. Six letters never join to the letter after them, which is why some words look broken into pieces.
Two sets. The Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) uses the same digits as English, and the countries further east mostly use Eastern Arabic numerals such as ١ (1), ٢ (2) and ٣ (3). Either way, numbers are read left to right, even inside right-to-left text.
Many dictionaries, including the widely used Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary, list words by root. You strip the word down to its root consonants and look under them: مدرسة (school) sits under d-r-s, next to درس (lesson). Once you know the common word patterns, finding the root becomes quick.