Lebanese 101: The Easy Way to Learn Lebanese Arabic: The Ultimate Guide to Become a Lebanese

I put 5 stars to this book, as I appreciate author’s work. But I wish there will be Arabic original writing as well. I learn fusha and wanted to add Lebanese dialect, so it’s double work for myself to change it from Latin transcript to original Arabic. As I also want to be able to write in Arabic Lebanese dialect.

If you don’t want to learn formal Arabic and want the Lebanese slang! This is for you! Super easy and super simply!

Highly recommend

Loved reading this book ! I’m half Lebanese but my Arabic was always horrible and I wanted to surprise my dad by speaking Arabic with him and I didn’t know where to start until I read this book ! It’s so interactive in the way that it gives you examples and then asks you to do some translating on your own (with an answer sheet after to check your answers) which really helps you build your confidence when you get it right ! Also I love how this book has a bit about the history of Lebanon it’s people and culture, Lebanon has always been my second home and I love to feel closer to it knowing it’s culture and learning the language simultaneously!!!

This was great! It was easy to learn and I love that it had exercises for you to complete after each lesson. I definitely enjoyed it!

Very easy to follow. It has exercises to practice the lessons. You don't even need to learn the arabic alphabet to start the book. It is a great, easy and fast way to start getting yourself immerse into the beautiful Lebanese dialect.

Currently learning MSA in school, but admire the Lebanese dialect and I pair this with my school textbook which also includes Levantine dialect, and it is super helpful! highly recommend!

The book costs £30, but it's just some Word documents cheaply printed without professional formatting. The content itself is not worth it. The general introduction is a copy-paste from Wikipedia and some Quora questions and blog posts (at least the author was honest enough to provide the link to the original sources). Then there's self-promotion for the author's Udemy course (that doesn't exist anymore, I think). The introduction to pronunciation just talks about 4 sounds, noted 2, 3, 5, 7 in "Franco Arabic" internet written system. But it doesn't explain how to pronounce them, neither does it explain other sounds. The rest of the book is a phrasebook, mostly identical to what you can find for free on Wikivoyage/Wikitravel. There are basic grammatical explanations about conjugations, but it's so simple that unless you already know the language, thanks to your family, you won't be able to use it. Overall, the book is therefore useless, in addition to being expensive. I asked Amazon for a refund. If you want to start learning Lebanese or Levantine from scratch, there's the "Talk Arabic Enhanced eBook (with audio)" from BBC Active on Apple Books for £7. And Pimsleur Eastern Arabic (based on Syrian/Damascus Arabic) for pronunciation. For conjugation, "The Most Used Verbs in Spoken Arabic: Jordan & Palestine (4th Edition, 2020)" is available on Amazon US and has great reviews, but I haven't tried it yet. For vocabulary, "Levantine Colloquial Arabic Vocabulary" is probably better than this book as well. And if you speak French, go for "Arabe Libanais de poche" by Assimil instead of this book.

Highly recommend!!

Like the other Matar TV stuff it's more hype than substance.

This book focused on the Lebanese dialect of Arabic and it was interesting to read. I found the exercise part especially useful. However, I was bothered by the fact that the author cited a lot of sentences in the grammar part of the book from another book (Levantine Arabic Verbs) without giving credit.