Materials for Instructors

1. The Arab Culture and Civilization website

Originally sponsored by NITLE, and offering a wealth of information about Arabic and the Arabic-speaking world, this site also contains several excellent articles on various aspects of Arabic, its dialects, and its development.

​2. Preparing Yourself to Teach FusHa and ‘Ammiyya:

A short video of Kristen Brustad and Mahmoud Al-Batal, authors of the Al-Kitaab Arabic Language Program, discussing the pedagogy behind the third edition of the series, which encourages the simultaneous teaching of MSA and dialect.

​Arabic-Language Resources

1. BBC Xtra Podcast

A well-produced, near-daily, call-in-format, Arabic-language podcast that covers a wide range of social, political and economic topics. A great potential resource for building listening exercises with more advanced students.

​2. Aswat al-Arabiyya

A wonderful resource of authentic listening materials, from the University of Texas at Austin.

3. Say What? Exploring Arabic Language Dialects

A very funny video from the National UAE, where speakers of various Arabic dialects compare vocabulary words with one another. Predictably, hilarity ensues.

​​4. CERCLL Native Speakers Series

A series of videos from the University of Arizona of native Arabic speakers talking about themselves in MSA.

​5. LARC at SDSU Native Speakers Interviews

A series of videos of native speakers answering questions in dialect and MSA, from the Language Acquisition Resource Center at San Diego State University.

​6. CERCLL Written Texts by Students of Arabic

A collection of authentic texts written by students of Arabic.

​​7. Arabic Dialects Video

An (imperfect) video containing demonstrations of speakers of many dialects in the Arabic-speaking world. *Note that some of the dialects are taken from the media or from non-spontaneous sources, and so are not so accurate as representations of local dialects.

​Non-Academic Articles about Fusha and Ammiyya

1. Is Arabic Really Just One Language?

A short piece on Slate about diglossia in Arabic.

2. Arabic: A Language with Too Many Navies

A short piece in the Economist on dialects and diglossia. A polarizing article (see the 9 pages of comments!).

​3. Translating “Frozen” Into Arabic

An article in the New Yorker by Elias Muhanna on translating Disney’s Frozen into Arabic.

​4. Learning Arabic from Egypt’s Revolution

A piece by Peter Hessler on learning Arabic in contemporary Egypt, which (despite some issues) makes some interesting points about the language.

5. Some Thoughts from Professor Emerita Aleya Rouchdy

An interesting blog post from Professor Aleya Rouchdy about various positions on the linguistic divide between Fusha and Ammiyya.

​6. الفصحى والعامية

An Arabic-language article from Jordanian Newspaper al-Gad on the subject.

​7. بين العامية والفصحى

A 2-part article on the issue of MSA and Ammiyya. Click here for the second part.