Your partner's mother in Jounieh joins the family video call, spots you in the corner of the screen, and says kifak? You've put four months into Duolingo Arabic for this exact moment. The phrase sitting ready in your head is kayfa 7aaluka. It's correct. It's also a phrase nobody in that family has said out loud in their life.
No, Duolingo doesn't have Lebanese Arabic. It has one Arabic course, that course teaches Modern Standard Arabic, and there's no Lebanese, Levantine, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian or Gulf option anywhere in the app. Here's what Lebanese Arabic is, how close it sits to its neighbors, and what to do with those four months.
What Duolingo's Arabic course is
Modern Standard Arabic, the written register. It's the Arabic of school textbooks, newspapers and the evening news. The course runs four sections of about 46 units, opens on the alphabet, and has no exercise that listens to you speak. Our Duolingo Arabic review goes through it section by section, and Does Duolingo teach Levantine Arabic? answers the wider version of this question.
Take coffee. Duolingo teaches you . A man on a balcony in Beirut asks for , and so does a man in Ramallah, the q gone to a glottal stop in both cities. He wants it, so up north he says baddi. Duolingo gave you , a word he has read many times and said roughly never.
What Lebanese Arabic actually is
Lebanese is a Levantine dialect. Levantine is the spoken Arabic of the eastern Mediterranean coast and the hills behind it: Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. Linguists split it into a northern half (Lebanese, Syrian) and a southern half (Palestinian, Jordanian), and on the ground the split barely registers. A woman from Tripoli and a man from Hebron talk at full speed and neither one slows down.
What they share is nearly everything that makes a dialect a dialect. The b- on the front of present-tense verbs. The glottal stop where the old q used to be. Everyday words like for here and for who, where Duolingo drills hunaa and man and never mentions the b-.
Where Lebanese and Palestinian part ways
Small things, mostly things you'd hear.
- Vowels. Beirut pulls a long
aatoward anesound. Palestinian , book, comes out closer to kteb up north. - A few very common words. Lebanese says shu for what, Palestinian says or . Lebanese baddi for I want, Palestinian . Lebanese kifak, Palestinian keefak, for how are you.
- Saying no. A Lebanese speaker mostly puts ma in front of the verb and stops: ma baddi. A Palestinian often wraps the verb in
ma...sh: . - Loanwords. Lebanese carries French: bonjour in the morning, merci for thanks.
- Tasty. Lebanese Tayyeb, Palestinian zaaki. That single word tells a Beiruti which side of the border you learned to eat on, and it has a guide of its own.
Add it up and you get an accent plus a few dozen words. Both sit across a canyon from the Modern Standard Arabic on your phone.
What to do if Lebanese is the goal
Three things work. Duolingo isn't one of them for this job.
Get Lebanese into your ears every day. A Lebanese series, Fairuz on the way to work, a Beirut podcast, the family group chat with the voice notes turned up. The vowels and the rhythm only come from listening.
Find a tutor from Lebanon, or a Levantine course with recorded speakers that asks you to say the words back.
Keep Duolingo for the alphabet if you enjoy it. That part transfers. The sentence drills don't. Duolingo alternatives for Arabic runs through the options.
How far a Palestinian course gets you
Most of the way. Tfaddalu, our app, teaches spoken urban Palestinian, the Arabic of Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem, with audio on every word, about ten minutes a day, free to try. We don't teach Lebanese, and we won't pretend the two are the same thing. But learn to say , , and in Ramallah and you'll land in Beirut with the grammar, the b-, the glottal stop and most of the vocabulary already in place. What's left is swapping shoo for shu and letting the vowels drift. Which Arabic dialect is closest to Palestinian? maps the whole family.
Four months of that and the next time the call connects, you answer her, then ask how she is in her own words.
Common questions
Does Duolingo have a Lebanese Arabic course? No. Duolingo has one Arabic course and it teaches Modern Standard Arabic. As of September 2026 there's no Lebanese, Levantine, Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian or Gulf course on the app.
Is Lebanese Arabic the same as Levantine Arabic? Lebanese is one Levantine dialect. Levantine covers Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan, and speakers from all four follow each other without effort. Lebanese has its own accent, a short list of its own everyday words, and a habit of borrowing from French.
Can I learn Lebanese Arabic from a Palestinian course? Most of it. The grammar, the b- prefix, the glottal stop and the bulk of the vocabulary are shared. After that you swap a handful of words, shu for shoo and baddi for biddi, and let the vowels settle by listening to Lebanese speakers.
Will Lebanese people understand my Duolingo Arabic? Yes, the way they'd understand a newsreader. Modern Standard Arabic is taught in every Lebanese school. The trouble runs the other way. Nobody answers in the register Duolingo teaches, so you won't follow what comes back.