Learn the 1,000 most common Lebanese Arabic words

How Words works

Words teaches the 1,000 most common words in Lebanese Arabic, a few new ones each day. Each session starts with the reviews that are due, then adds today’s new words.

You practise every word two ways. On a Listen card you hear the word and see it in Arabic script, and you recall what it means. On a Say card you see the English and say the word out loud in Arabic. These are different skills: practising comprehension mostly improves comprehension, and practising production mostly improves production.1 Practising from English to Arabic also builds about 16–22% more ability to produce a word, with no cost to recognising it.2

On the first day, each new word is shown once and then recalled five times, mixing both directions. Five recalls in the first session work far better than one or three: four weeks later, learners could produce 48% of words practised five times, against about a quarter of words practised once or three times.3 After that, each direction becomes its own card, and FSRS, the scheduler Anki uses, decides when you see it again.4 Cards you know well come back after weeks or months. Cards you struggle with come back sooner.

The Latin spelling appears only after you answer. Familiar letters can mislead: English speakers who saw Arabic words spelled with a “q” learned to tell them apart worse than people who saw no spelling at all, because English “q” sounds like “k”.5 For the same reason, Cedarly writes the Lebanese qaf as “2”, never “q”.

How long it takes

At 10 new words a day, you reach all 1,000 in about three months. At 5 a day, the default, it takes six to seven months. Each new word takes about a minute on its first day. Reviews build up over the first few weeks and then level off. Roughly, expect about 15 minutes a day at 5 new words, and about half an hour at 10.

These numbers assume you come back every day. Spacing practice out is one of the most reliable findings in this research. Across 98 comparisons in second-language learning, spaced practice beat crammed practice on tests taken a day or more later (g = 0.80), and the advantage was larger still for vocabulary (g = 1.15).6 Doing a short session at the same time each day is also how habits form. Missing a single day made no measurable difference to habit formation, so if you miss one, just come back the next day.7

Why it works

Trying to recall a word is better practice than reading it again. Across studies, testing yourself beat restudying the same material (g = 0.50), and the benefit was largest when learners saw the correct answer afterward.8 That is why every card asks you to answer before it shows you.

Flashcards came out on top of the deliberate study methods in a meta-analysis of vocabulary learning: learners recalled about 73% of word meanings on delayed tests, against 48% for word lists. That flashcard figure comes from a small number of studies, so treat it as a strong pattern rather than a precise number.2

Grade yourself honestly

The schedule only works if your grades are accurate. Learners are lenient with themselves. In one study, answers students judged fully correct contained only about 38% of the right answer when they had nothing to compare against, and the more overconfident they were, the less they remembered two days later.9 If you mark a word Good when you only half knew it, FSRS believes you and waits too long to show it again.

• Again: you didn’t get it, got part of it, or said it wrong. A partial answer is Again.
• Hard: you got it right, but only after real effort.
• Good: you got it right after a moment’s thought.
• Easy: it came instantly.

Compare your answer with the audio, not just the spelling. If your pronunciation was clearly off, that counts as Again too.

Say every word out loud

Words you say aloud are remembered better than words you read silently.10 On Say cards, say the word before you reveal the answer, then listen to the recording and compare. Answering in your head feels faster, but it trains a weaker skill than the one you need in a conversation.

What 1,000 words will and won’t do

A thousand words is a base, not fluency. To understand a text without help, readers need to know about 98% of the words in it.11 In written Arabic, the most common 1,000 words cover only about two thirds of the words on a page.12 Everyday speech uses a smaller set of words, so spoken Lebanese is easier to follow, but the point stands.

What the base does is let you learn from everything else. The more words around a new word you already know, the more often you can work out its meaning from context. Your tutor sessions, conversations and listening become easier and teach you more. Pair Words with real listening and speaking. The guide to learning Lebanese Arabic covers what to do alongside it.