The sea of Arabic dialects is vast, with dialects being spoken by more than 300 million native speakers. These dialects can be categorized into various groups based on variety of factors. The most popular factor to categorize the Arabic dialects is based on geographical location. These dialectal groups are Arabian Peninsula Arabic, Eastern Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and North African Arabic.

All Arabic dialects are based off either the Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic framework, meaning there are noticeable similarities between dialects despite them also differing from one another. Below are the most common dialects of Arabic you will most likely hear spoken:

Egyptian Arabic

This form of Arabic is the most widely spoken dialect, not only by 60 million people in Egypt, but also across the Middle East and parts of Africa thanks to its prevalent use in Arabic movies, television shows, music, books and news media. Egyptian Arabic uses much of the same vocabulary found in MSA (Modern Standard Arabic), though there are noticeable unique characteristics including a different grammar and sentence structure in its writing and a peculiar pronunciation of certain words and letters such as coffee and the letter jeem (G).

Levantine Arabic

This Arabic dialect is the common form of Arabic spoken in the eastern part of the Middle East along the Mediterranean Sea in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. Levantine Arabic is the second largest Arabic dialect spoken and is also featured in Arabic films, Arab news broadcasts and television programs. Similar to Egyptian Arabic, this dialect also closely follows the vocabulary of Modern Standard Arabic. However, the Levantine dialect has unique lexical, phonological and grammatical characteristics including the personal pronouns such as “I,” “he,” and “she.” Some greetings and expressions and the simplification of verbs are also unique features of the Levantine dialect. Depending on the social context and one’s location, the Levantine dialect can have up to 12 different forms of personal pronouns.

Sudanese Arabic

This dialect of Arabic is spoken by various tribes within the country of Sudan. Many tribes have different dialects of the Sudanese Arabic. This form of Arabic is so widely spoken that it has developed its own Arabic dialect. This Arabic dialect varies widely from MSA used in other Arabic dialects in the form of pronunciation and vocabulary.

Mesopotamian Arabic

This Arabic dialect, which is mostly spoken Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey contain vocabulary and linguistic elements borrowed from other languages such as Turkish and Farsi. This is largely due to the area’s multiculturalist history.

Peninsular or Gulf Arabic

Peninsular or Gulf Arabic also has many different forms and sub-dialects because his area is also multicultural. This form of Arabic is seen as closest to MSA as it has fewer loan words from other languages than other dialects. This dialect is commonly spoken in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

North African Maghrebi Arabic

This Arabic dialect is spoken in Northern Africa in countries such as Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. The dialects here have been heavily influenced by the area’s history of European colonization with several loan words and word pronunciation from romantic languages like Spanish and French. An example of this is the pronunciation of the letter jeem in dajaal (chicken) which is pronounced like the “j” in “bonjour” instead of “j” in “jay.” The North African Arabic dialect also has some elements of the Berber language as well. This dialect of Arabic is spoken very fast and requires much concentration to understand.