I have been learning arabic for almost a year now and my boyfriend has told me to stop talking to him about it. He doesn't want to hear anything about what I am learning, or even be near me when I am doing my duolingo lessons. He says it is because I am "forcing it." He gets very frustrated when I mention anything about it. He understands arabic but does not speak it, and his parents speak it. I began to learn because I wanted to be closer to his culture and be able to speak with his grandmother.

Has anyone else had this issue? What should I do? I don't want to stop learning, I have already dedicated a good portion of my time to becoming fluent.

Edit for additional context: 1. We have been together almost 3 years, and I know he loves me dearly, this is just the one thing that keeps coming up. 2. He is pure lebanese and I am also part syrian/lebanese myself, but much less genetically and more culturally. I grew up with levantine food as a large part of my childhood but the last person to speak arabic was my great grandmother.

Edit 2: I've read all the comments and I didn't realize this would reach so many people. Thank you all for your suggestions, reasoning, support, and personal stories.

We discussed it and he understands that I am not going to stop learning, because this has become a part of my life and I would really like to unlock the beautiful cultures that come with learning this language. He doesn't care as much about duolingo or even my other forms of practice, he was sensitive at that time to it because of my attempts at speaking with his parents in broken MSA and it seemed a bit embarrassing for both of us. He isn't ashamed of his heritage, he loves his culture, he just doesn't know how to speak the language himself. He has said he is proud of me for learning something so difficult, even if the subject makes him uncomfortable.

I've personally decided to try to speak less with his parents simply because I don't think the MSA accent I've been given from duolingo is even conducive to learning how to speak. Like many comments said, duolingo is better for learning to read. Once I start lessons in Lebanese arabic (which I always intended to do after completing the duo course) I can start practicing with the correct accent. I suspect that once I have rudimentary skills in the correct dialect he'll be much more comfortable with me speaking to him and his parents.

Some clarifications for some of the meaner comments: He is christian, from the mount lebanon region, they are very culturally lebanese and don't "not identify as arab or lebanese." His mom told him he can marry outside of religion and such if theyre a good person (and shes very religious) so thats not an issue. We talk about marriage relatively often even if we are waiting a long time, we're both in it for the long haul so not wanting me to learn isn't about him eventually leaving to marry a girl from the same culture.

Again, thank you for your comments!

My family is from the Middle East and moved to America. They all speak Arabic. But I do not. My parents felt like it was not necessary to teach me their native language. Despite being exposed to it every day since I was a child, I understand practically nothing (although I know a few words) and definitely can't speak. In fact, my grandparents don't even speak English and whatever English was there has been eroded by dementia. So, I am very isolated from my family and culture. I have decided to finally learn Arabic. I am looking to learn the Levantine Dialect. I asked my mom to teach me and she agreed but it hasn't been going well. There are very poor online resources and whatever is there is unengaging and/or expensive. I know greetings and even learned the alphabet but I can barely read. My original goal was not to learn MSA as I wouldn't be needing it and it's very hard but l'm not really sure if you can learn spoken Arabic without MSA. Does anyone have any advice? I feel like I'm learning an alien language.

I spoke a bit of Arabic today with a patient, and she understood!! I felt like a superhero tbh, even though it was only a little bit and she was from Yemen (I've been learning Palestinian dialect for 6 months). I think she appreciated it :) just wanted to share

I often hear that syrian and lebanese accents are softly-spoken and feminine sounding. As someone who can’t differentiate between the levantine accents, I’m curious if that applies to the palestinian accent too?

To your ears, does the speaking style of palestinian Arabic sound soft/gentle or is it harsher more so like iraq or the gulf?

Specifically the urban or “madani” accent spoken in cities like jerusalem and nablus

I was learning Arabic about 5 years ago and was taught handwriting by a lovely Palestinian man. I've started learning again and I'm wondering if my writing is clear or should I go back to using 2 dots instead of dashes and forming S' & SH' with the bits in the middle?

Please could I have some feedback on my handwriting?

شكراً

How do you find my arabic? Learned the levantine dialect but think I adapted some tunisian 😄. What can I do better?

I learned arabic from lebanese people (just asking them, writing everything down....Never took a course or watched any videos back then). Later I married a tunisian and what's kind of funny: When I'm in Tunisia, they think I'm (half) lebanese, but when I'm talking with lebanese, they say I speak tounsi shway 😁 (but I don't want to!).

So instead of totally (!) not pronouncing the ق (sometimes I do it nevertheless 🥴), what can I do to sound more lebanese?

I understand the phrase comes from a popular free Syria song, but I’m a little confused on the difference between the two. Is it simply that the top is referring to a male and the bottom to a female?

Please please can somebody explain as I am sooo confused :( learning Syrian arabic

I work as a teaching assistant in the UK, and a Syrian girl (5 years old) has just joined our class. Currently, she does not speak any English. We have other children in our class who speak Levantine Arabic and they can sometimes help translate what she's saying, but, I wanted to ask if anyone has any advice on better ways to communicate with her and also to help her learn English.

Are there any specific Arabic words or phrases that would be useful to know? If I said something to her, i.e. "Hungry?" but in Arabic would that make sense? Or would it be better to try memorising the entire phrase "Are you hungry?"

If anyone has any advice on where to begin learning a bit of Levantine Arabic to understand when she talks to us, please let me know. English is my native language. And to any native Arabic speakers who learned English as an additional language: were there any specific aspects you struggled with? What helped you overcome that?

I appreciate I won't be able to become fluent by the time we return to school in January, but any tips on how I can help her better settle in would be appreciated. To my understanding, this is her first time in school (despite most children starting at 4 years old, they aren't required to join a school until they turn 5).

Thanks so much!!!!

Hello, I work with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and I was wondering what would be the appropriate way to say my job in conversational Levantine dialect, in a way that's respectful to people with IDD

Shukran!

Hey y'alls. I live in Israel and many folks around me speak Palestinian Arabic as a native language, so Id like to learn it to be able to communicate and connect more easily. Would learning MSA be necessary for this purpose? Are there any sources for Palestinian Arabic specifically that you could recommend? Thanks in advance.

I'm learning dialect, and every time I study I think wow this is so, so different from English. Does it get easier, is there a time where it starts to "click"? I have a teacher once a week, and I try to study a bit each day

I get a lot of trash talk particularly from Egyptian or Saudi opponents on chess.com. Of course the typical swears about my mother and plenty of times being called a dumbass.

I don’t want to stoop to that level, but I’d love to learn this lesser-taught side of Arabic. What’s some good PG-13 trash talk I can use against my opponents?

I'm currently studying levantine Arabic. And many words do have the E or O vowels, which don't exist in standard Arabic.

Since I study best when I write things down, that I can come back to later on, I wonder how I can write down those vowels, so I remember where to place them

And I'd rather not invent my own symbolisms if there are ones that already exist

Either exist for learning purposes, or borrowed from other cultures, or anything like that

(I know I can use the latin script for this, and things like that, but I do prefer using the Arabic script for Arabic)

Any resource in the different ways letters can come together, like الم shortened to a combined character ? Thanks for supporting a new learner y’all !

I have an app where i’ve been learning it but the verbs apparently have 2 ways of saying them? I’ll attach a screenshot so you know what I mean. Can anyone please explain why it displays the verb in its base form in 2 different ways? And also if anyone just confirm that that “[s/thing]” means “something” and it just means that the verb is transitive (that needs a Direct Object) that’d be neat too :)

Hello! Using what I learned today 😎

I can understand arabic fluently (my parents speak it to me, i respond back in english) however when speaking it the word i want to say just doesnt come to mind. what would be the best practice for me?

In Palestinian dialect man is "zalameh" - so in that case is it feminine? To use adjectives or connected pronouns, would I have to use the feminine? Or masculine?

Thanks

Where could someone learn sexy/bedroom talk? My partner and I recently spent intimate time together and communicated almost fully in Arabic. It was really nice and very affirming to them, but it was pretty pg-13 - “I want you, I love you, etc.”

Is there anywhere I could learn a little more than this? They can’t really teach me because they have basically only had sex in English

Hi,

I am meeting the family where somebody recently died. What would you typically say to, lets say, the brother of the dead person. I know people say „allah yer7amo“ but would you say that directly to the relatives while shaking hands? What is an other typicsl expression when you see the family?

Thanks

I can kinda speak Arabic, and i’m part Arab (Syria/Palestine) but I am fully illiterate. How should I go about learning to write and expanding my very limited vocabulary that mostly contains swear words?

What dialect do i focus on? My Arab family is from the boarder of Syria and Palestine. There are too many Arabs that refuse to learn English in area that speak the levantine dialect.

How do you say "I'm sorry" in the context of empathizing with bad news?

"Asif" kind of implies that you're apologizing or that it was your fault, I'm looking for what to say to someone when telling them bad news (not death or anything).

Edit: sounds like the context is super important, so basically I was helping a friend apply for a grant that he was really counting on, and I just found out he doesn't qualify. I'm forwarding him the email and want to say something along the lines of "I'm really sorry, but I just found out that you don't qualify to apply." (And then share all the details). Also saying it in MSA or Levantine would be fine, really anything as long as he can understand.