Ask a Syrian where they're from and you may get a one-word answer: ish-shaam. Ask what they speak and you'll get shaami. Now open a course catalogue. Neither word is in it. The course is called "Levantine Arabic," and the gap between those two names is where most of the confusion around Shami Arabic lives.
What shaami means
The word is ish-shaam, and it comes in two sizes.
The small one is Damascus. To Syrians the capital is ish-shaam far more often than dimashq, and a Damascene is shaami the way a Parisian is a Parisian. The big one is bilaad ish-shaam, the lands of Shaam, an old name for the whole eastern Mediterranean strip: today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. Greater Syria, in the English of a century ago.
One old explanation for the name: stand in Mecca facing the sunrise and Syria is on your left. The Arabic for left shares a root with shaam, and the Arabic for right, yameen, gave Yemen its name on the other side. Whether or not that's the true origin, it's the story people tell.
So when an Arab says shaami about a way of speaking, they mean the Arabic of that strip. Textbook writers reached for "Levantine" instead, from the French word for the east, where the sun comes up. Speakers say shaami, course catalogues say Levantine, and they mean the same thing.
Which Arabic people mean when they search for it
Two answers, depending on who's asking.
In the narrow sense, Shami means Syrian, often specifically the Arabic of Damascus. That's the sense a Syrian uses. If your husband's family is from Homs and your teacher is Lebanese, someone will eventually tell you your accent is shaami and mean Syrian.
In the wide sense, Shami is the whole family: Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Palestinian together. That's what "Levantine Arabic" means, and it's what most learners mean. People from Nablus, Amman, Homs and Beirut follow each other at full speed, and the differences are what they tease each other about over dinner.
Both are correct. The useful move is finding out which one your course means. A "Levantine" course is usually Syrian or Lebanese in flavour, and sometimes a blend nobody speaks at home. Which app teaches Levantine properly goes app by app, and there's a fuller portrait of the family in Levantine Arabic.
Shami next to Egyptian and Gulf Arabic
The quickest way to see what Shami is: put it beside the two other big spoken Arabics. The Shami column is Palestinian, the dialect this site records, so every word in it has audio.
| English | Shami (Palestinian) | Egyptian | Gulf |
|---|---|---|---|
| what? | / | eih | wesh / shnoo |
| I want | 3aayiz | abgha / abi | |
| now | dilwa'ti | al7een | |
| very | awi | waayid | |
| how? | izzayy | shloon | |
| there isn't | mafeesh | maa fee | |
| coffee | 'ahwa | gahwa |
Read down the "what" row: three regions, and the words have nothing in common. Egyptian also turns every j into a hard g, so jameel (beautiful) becomes gameel in Cairo. Gulf turns the q into a g, which is why coffee is gahwa in Riyadh and starts with a throat catch in Damascus, Beirut and Jerusalem.
The row that matters most is "I want," because you'll say it more than anything else. Learn biddi and the other two are foreign. That's the real reason picking a dialect comes before picking an app.
What the Shami dialects share
Cross from Nablus to Amman to Damascus to Beirut and these travel with you.
- The
b-on the front of an everyday present-tense verb. , I write, in Ramallah and in Beirut. - "Want" built on bidd with a pronoun ending. biddi in Palestine and Syria, baddi in Lebanon, the same word.
- A one-word "not" for nouns and adjectives: in Palestine and much of Lebanon. Damascus says mu, and everyone understands both.
- "There is" as , "there isn't" as ma fee or ma feesh. More on that pair.
- No verb "to be" in the present. ana is "I'm tired," with nothing in between. There's no word for is.
- "Have" done with 3ind and a pronoun: , I have. Having with 3ind.
- In the cities, the
qas a glottal stop. Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem and Ramallah all say 'ahwe for coffee. So does Cairo, so this marks you as urban more than as Shami. - The greeting and thank-you words: , , , . Greetings work across all four countries with tiny changes in the tune.
Learn one Shami dialect properly and all of that comes with it. What's left is the splits.
Where they split
The splits are small, and you hear them in every sentence.
| meaning | Palestinian | Damascus | Beirut |
|---|---|---|---|
| what? | / | shu | shu |
| thing | shi | shi | |
| I want | biddi | baddi | |
| not | mu | mish | |
| we | ne7na | ni7na | |
| they | hinne | hinne | |
| I don't know | ma ba3ref | ma ba3ref |
The q. All the cities drop it to a glottal stop. Outside the cities it splits by countryside. Villages in the hills around Ramallah and Nablus say k. Bedouin speakers, the south of Palestine and the Hawran plain below Damascus say g. Druze villages on both sides of the border keep the full back-of-the-throat q. So the sound tells you city or village long before it tells you which country.
The Lebanese vowels. Lebanese, and Damascene to a lesser degree, pulls a long aa forward toward the vowel in "bed." (must) comes out nearer lezem, and (door) drifts toward beb. Palestinian keeps the vowel wide open. It's slight and it's in every sentence, which is why you hear Lebanese as an accent before you can name a word.
The Palestinian 'eesh. Palestinians have two words for "what," 'eesh and shoo, and the first one all but vanishes north of the border. Say 'eesh haada? and you've placed yourself south of Damascus. Same with 'ishi for "thing," against the bare shi up north. The words that mark you as Palestinian has the full set.
The -sh on a negated verb. Palestinian wraps a verb in ma...sh: ma ba3rafsh, I don't know. Damascus and Beirut drop the tail. That little hiss ties Palestinian to Egyptian and cuts it off from the north, and it's the one grammatical difference you have to learn on purpose. Palestinian vs Syrian walks through all of this with the vowels.
Why Shami is so often the recommended dialect
Three reasons come up again and again.
It's understood almost everywhere. Shami sits in the middle of the map, between Egyptian on one side and Iraqi and Gulf speech on the other, and people on both sides follow it without much effort. Egyptian has wider reach through cinema, but that reach runs one way.
Then there's television. Syrian drama filled Ramadan schedules across the region for twenty years, and when Turkish soap operas were dubbed for the Arab market in the 2000s, they were dubbed into Syrian. A generation from Morocco to Iraq grew up hearing Shami every evening. Lebanese pop and Fairuz did the same job on the radio.
And the diaspora is large. Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese have been leaving for over a century, and many more since 2011: Dearborn, Chicago, Berlin, Santiago, São Paulo, Sydney. If there's an Arabic in your stairwell, it's often Shami.
Add that the four dialects are close, so one course covers four countries, and the recommendation writes itself. One caveat: Shami is still four dialects, so pick the one your people speak.
Where a Palestinian course fits inside Shami
This site teaches Palestinian, the southern member of the family. Everything in the shared list above is in it, plus the Palestinian side of each split: 'eesh, 'ishi, 'i7na, humme, and the -sh on a negated verb.
That makes Palestinian a good way into Shami as a whole. Jordanian was never in question, Syrian arrives after a few weeks of listening, and Lebanese needs a couple of vowels and some French loanwords. The full distances are in which dialect is closest to Palestinian, and the case for choosing Palestinian specifically is in Palestinian Arabic.
If your people are in Damascus or Beirut, learn their dialect and use a Syrian or Lebanese resource. If they're in Ramallah, Haifa, Amman or the Palestinian diaspora, a Palestinian course is the right size of Shami.
How to start
Pick the country first. Then find material with a native speaker on every word, because 3 and 7, the two throat sounds we write as numbers, don't survive text. Those two sounds come first, and our romanization guide explains the number-for-letter spelling that shows up all over Arabic chat and in this guide.
Then greetings, family, wants and questions, in that order, ten minutes a day. How to speak Arabic step by step lays it out. Leave Modern Standard for later; MSA or dialect first explains why the usual advice has it backwards.
For the Palestinian branch, Tfaddalu is our app: spoken urban Palestinian, a native recording on every word and sentence, ten-minute sessions, and it's free to try. For Syrian or Lebanese, Pimsleur's Eastern Arabic and Mango's Levantine course are the two we'd point you at; a tutor from the right city beats either. Whichever you choose, the dictionary here gives you the Palestinian word with audio.
Common questions
What does shami mean in Arabic? shaami is the adjective from ish-shaam, which means Damascus in the narrow sense and the whole of Greater Syria, today's Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, in the wide one. Applied to Arabic, it's the dialect family that textbooks call Levantine.
Is Shami Arabic the same as Levantine Arabic? Yes. Shami is the Arabic name and Levantine is the European one for the same group of dialects, the spoken Arabic of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine.
Is Shami Arabic Syrian or Lebanese? Both, and Jordanian and Palestinian as well. In everyday speech a Syrian may use shaami to mean Damascus Arabic specifically. Used about the dialect family, it covers all four countries.
Is Palestinian Arabic Shami? Yes. Palestinian is the southern branch of Shami, or Levantine, Arabic. A Palestinian and a Syrian understand each other at full speed; the differences are a handful of small words, the vowels, and the -sh on the end of a negated verb.
Should I learn Shami or Egyptian Arabic? Learn the one spoken by the people you want to talk to. Egyptian reaches more people through films and music. Shami covers Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine plus a large diaspora, and is understood well across the region. If nobody specific is on your list, either works, as long as you don't split your first year between both.