Have you tried out the fun, free Arabic language app for English speakers?

You are living in Qatar and you want to learn Arabic, but does not have the time or opportunity to go to an institute and learn about it. So what do you do in such a case?

You have some relief at hand because a free app, recently released by the Georgetown University in Qatar’s (GU-Q) Arabic language programme, aims to help make it simpler for expatriates and tourists to strike up conversations with locals in Qatar, reported Gulf Times.

The Qatari Phrasebook app, which is available in both Android and iOS versions, is a quick reference guide that provides users with both the written and spoken form of more than 1,500 common Arabic words and phrases, as well as pronunciation tips.

The app specifically focuses on the dialect spoken in Qatar. Its creator, mobile learning specialist Hany Fazza, came up with the idea after hearing from Qatar residents who wanted to learn conversational Arabic but couldn’t attend formal classes.

“I thought ‘they’re non-native speakers, they’re working here, and they don’t have time to go to evening school. What about if I create something that is cheap and easy to use?’” Fazza, an Arabic language instructor at GU-Q, told The Peninsula.

“The common mobile applications we have are for Modern Standard Arabic – you’ll find very few applications that have something to do with the dialects,” he added.

The Qatari Phrasebook app has different sections for greetings, shopping, transportation, weather, and finance and provides users with the Arabic text, spoken pronunciation, and phonetic spelling of each term.

By using the phrases in the app, English speakers will be able to order food, ask for directions, and interact with shopkeepers, among others. The phrasebook works offline and will allow users to star favorite phrases for quick access, and is easily searchable.

The app, which took two years to develop, was funded by a GU-Q faculty research grant and features the voices of five GU-Q students.

If you want to learn Arabic in a little more organised and serious way, then this post has some awesome suggestions of where to do it.