You can be polite and get around
Greetings that get a real reply, a taxi, a coffee, numbers and prices. About a hundred sentences, and they cover most of a normal day.
The honest guide
How to learn Saudi Arabicwithout wasting a year.
Every option, what each one actually costs, and which one suits you - including the ones we do not sell and the one that is free.
- Written by people who teach it, not by a marketing team
- Includes the free options and says when they are the right answer
- No email required to read any of it
The short answer
Learn the dialect, not the textbook language.
To hold a conversation in Saudi Arabia you need the spoken dialect, not Modern Standard Arabic. Learn around 2,000 high-frequency words and sentences with audio, and speak them out loud with a native speaker once or twice a week. Most people reach a real conversation in six to nine months at three to five hours a week.
Everything below is the detail: what each route costs, how long it takes, and where each one stops working.
How long it really takes
Six to nine months, at three to five hours a week.
Honest milestones, assuming you are starting from nothing and you are speaking out loud from week one. Reading only, it takes much longer, and many people never arrive.
Weeks 1-4 Months 2-3 You can survive a conversation
You catch the shape of what someone said and answer badly but correctly. This is the stage where people switch to English on you, and the stage most people quit.
Months 4-6 People stop switching
You answer fast enough that English is no longer the easier option for them. This is the real threshold, and it is a speaking threshold, not a vocabulary one.
Months 7-12 You have opinions in Arabic
Jokes, disagreements, small talk that goes somewhere. Slower than a native and understood by everyone.
The five ways people do it
What each one is good at, and where it stops.
Three of these five are things we do not sell, and one is free. If a route below suits you better than what we make, take it.
Free government and university courses
Free
- Good at
- Genuinely thorough, properly structured, and the audio is real speech rather than a synthesised voice. Nothing else at this price is close.
- Where it stops
- Most were recorded decades ago, and the ones aimed at Arabia teach a west-coast dialect and a formal register. You will be understood and you will sound like a documentary. There is nobody to ask when you are stuck.
Suits: Disciplined self-teachers who like a syllabus and do not mind old material.
Phone apps
Free to about 60 SAR a month
- Good at
- The habit. An app is the only thing on this list that will make you do five minutes on a bad day, and five minutes on a bad day is worth more than an hour you skip.
- Where it stops
- Almost all of them teach Modern Standard Arabic, which is the written language. You can finish a whole tree and still not follow two colleagues talking. They also do not make you speak.
Suits: Keeping a streak alive alongside something else. Not as the main thing.
Video courses
About 300-600 SAR, one payment
- Good at
- Someone has done the ordering for you, you can go at your own pace, and the good ones are made by people who speak the dialect natively.
- Where it stops
- A recording cannot hear you. You can watch forty hours and still have never said a sentence to a person who might not understand it, which is the only thing that actually builds speaking.
Suits: Structure, at a fraction of the price of lessons - as long as something else makes you speak.
Tutor marketplaces
About 40-120 SAR an hour
- Good at
- Choice. Hundreds of teachers, filters, reviews, and you can change your mind after one lesson.
- Where it stops
- Very few teach a Saudi dialect - most Arabic teachers on these sites teach Egyptian or Modern Standard, and the listing will not always say so clearly. Quality swings wildly between teachers, and there is usually no shared curriculum, so lessons drift into free conversation.
Suits: People who want to shop around, and who know enough to check which dialect they are being taught.
A reference book with audio, plus a weekly teacher
About 190 SAR once, plus 400 SAR a month if you add lessons
- Good at
- The book gives you the words in frequency order and the audio to hear them; the teacher makes you produce them under pressure. Reading and speaking are different skills and this is the cheapest way to train both.
- Where it stops
- It asks more of you than an app. Nobody sends a notification, and a book on a shelf teaches nothing.
Suits: People who want to actually speak, and will put three to five hours a week in.
What we make
The last of those five is what we do.
Not because it is the only way - three of the routes above are fine and one is free - but because it is the one that gets people speaking fastest for the money.
Start
Find out where you are
The free level test takes about ten minutes and tells you which of three levels to begin at. No account, no payment.
Then
Get the words in the right order
2,500+ words and sentences ranked by how often you will need them, with audio on every line, a web book and a PDF.
Then
Say them to somebody
One free hour with a native teacher, then one to three hours a week if it is working. Saudi, Egyptian or Fusha.
Meanwhile
Read something easy
Short stories written in the dialect rather than translated into it, so reading stays a pleasure rather than a second syllabus.
The questions behind the question
What people ask before they start.
Should I learn Modern Standard Arabic first?
No, unless you need to read newspapers, study formally, or work with documents. MSA is written and broadcast; it is not what anyone speaks at lunch. Starting with it costs most people about a year and they still cannot follow a conversation. The script is the same, so nothing you learn in the dialect is wasted if you take MSA up later.
Is Saudi Arabic hard for English speakers?
The pronunciation is harder than the grammar. Spoken Saudi drops most of the case endings that make written Arabic difficult, so sentence building is simpler than the textbooks suggest. The two real obstacles are a handful of sounds English does not have and the speed people talk at - both of which are audio problems, which is why anything you learn without listening will not survive a real conversation.
Najdi or Hejazi - which one should I learn?
Learn one properly and you will understand the other. Najdi is spoken in Riyadh and the centre, Hejazi in Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah. They differ in roughly two hundred everyday words and some pronunciation, and every Saudi understands both. Pick the one where you live or work, and learn to recognise the other rather than produce it.
How many words do I actually need?
Around 2,000 sentences and expressions covers almost everything an ordinary day asks of you. Frequency matters far more than volume: the first 500 you meet most days will do more for you than the next 5,000 combined, which is why order matters as much as quantity.
Can I learn it without speaking to anybody?
You can learn to understand it. You will not learn to speak it. Understanding and producing are separate skills and only one of them can be practised alone - which is why people who study for a year in silence still freeze in the first real conversation. If lessons are not possible, at minimum say every sentence out loud rather than reading it.
Will people actually speak Arabic back to me?
Once you are fast enough that English is no longer easier for them, yes - and that threshold arrives earlier than most people expect, usually around month four or five. Before that, expect to be switched to English constantly. It is not a judgement on your Arabic; the conversation just has a job to do.
Start now
Say something in Saudi Arabic this week.
Start with the free phrases, take a free hour with a teacher, or go straight to the book and have 2,500+ words and sentences on your phone in a minute.
Instant access after payment. Fourteen-day refund on the digital edition.