--- title: "Does Duolingo teach Arabic? Only from English, as of 2026 | Fasaha" description: "Duolingo teaches Arabic from English only, checked on its course list on 2 September 2026. What Turkish, Uzbek, Spanish or Russian speakers use instead." canonical: "https://fasaha.app/blog/duolingo-no-arabic-from-your-language" language: "en" direction: "ltr" --- [All posts](https://fasaha.app/blog) # Duolingo teaches Arabic from English only. Here is what that means if English is not your first language. Published 2 September 2026 9 min read ![Two smartphones face down on a wooden desk beside an open blank notebook and a lapis pencil.](https://fasaha.app/blog/duolingo-no-arabic-from-your-language/hero.webp) ## Key takeaways - Duolingo's Arabic course has one base language, English. This is visible in the public course list Duolingo itself serves, not in a blog claim. - Learning Arabic through English when English is your second language doubles the load: every gloss, every grammar note, every mistake message arrives in a language you are also still decoding. Native English readers skip that cost, not the other six questions. - Seven questions separate apps that teach Arabic from apps that drill it: interface language, fusha or dialect, real text or cards, a dictionary inside the text, roots and patterns, self-scheduling review, and what the year costs. - Fasaha answers six of the seven for these markets and has honest limits: Modern Standard Arabic only, no human tutor, no streaks, no certificate, a smaller catalogue than the incumbents. - The alternative set is different in each market. Turkish, Uzbek, Spanish and Russian readers get different tables, not a translation of one list. ## How to check the course list yourself Duolingo publishes a machine-readable list of every course direction it offers. In that list, Arabic appears as a target language under one base language only: English. On 2 September 2026 the Turkish entry listed English, German and Russian; the Russian entry listed English, German, Spanish and French; the Spanish entry listed ten languages, none of them Arabic; and there was no Uzbek entry at all. This is worth stating plainly because most pages that say "Duolingo has no Arabic from Turkish" say it without evidence, and because the answer can change. Duolingo's largest expansion, 148 new courses announced on 30 April 2025, added Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin across its interface languages. Arabic was not among the subjects expanded. If that ever changes, this page will be rewritten, not patched. Every availability claim on this page carries the date it was checked. Re-read the course list before relying on it. ## Why learning Arabic through English costs more than it looks A Turkish learner using the English course does not get one course, they get two. Every gloss is an English word they have to resolve first. Every grammar note assumes an English reader's blind spots, not a Turkish reader's advantages. And the advantages are real: Turkish, Uzbek, Russian and Spanish each carry hundreds of words that came from Arabic. Kitap, maktab, алгебра, aceituna. A course written from English cannot see them. The same applies to the mistake messages, the audio prompts and the settings screens. When all of that arrives in a second language, the learner spends attention on the wrapper instead of on Arabic. For a script-based language where the first weeks are about letters and short vowels, that attention is the scarcest thing they have. ## Seven questions that sort the apps "Best app" is not a verdict anyone can source, so this page ranks criteria, not products. Each question can be answered from the app itself in a few minutes, without trusting a store description. The order matters: the first two decide whether the app is for you at all. 1. Is there an interface in your language, and is the Arabic content also explained in it? 2. Does it teach fusha (Modern Standard Arabic) or a dialect, and which dialect? 3. Do you read continuous real text, or only cards, drills and isolated sentences? 4. Is there a dictionary on tap inside the text, or do you leave the app to look a word up? 5. Does it show the root and pattern of a word, or only word-to-translation pairs? 6. Does review schedule itself, and does the app work offline? 7. What is free, what is paid, and what does a year cost in your currency? There is an eighth column in every table below, and it is mandatory: what this app does better than Fasaha. A row where that cell is empty is a row we have not researched. ![Hand-drawn card with seven empty checkboxes and ruled lines.](https://fasaha.app/blog/duolingo-no-arabic-from-your-language/seven-questions-checklist.webp) Seven questions to test any Arabic app directly from its own interface. ## Where Fasaha stands on the seven questions Interface in your language: yes, in Arabic, English, Turkish, Russian, Uzbek and Spanish, and the dictionary explains every word in that language, not in English. Fusha or dialect: Modern Standard Arabic only. Real text: yes, graded stories from A0 to C2, podcasts, video and Arabic Wikipedia, every word of them tappable. Dictionary inside the text: yes, that is the product. Roots and patterns: yes, on every card, with the family of the root. Review: spaced review of the words you saved, and the library works offline. Price: free to start; Premium opens the complete library and the stores handle billing. What Fasaha does not do, said once and clearly. It teaches Modern Standard Arabic only, so a reader who wants Moroccan darija for Spain or Levantine for a Latin American heritage family is better served by a dialect course. There is no human tutor and no messaging, by decision. There are no streaks or leagues, which some readers genuinely want. There is no certificate and no exam preparation. The catalogue is smaller than the incumbents'. Speaking practice is evaluation of what you said, not conversation with a person. ## What to use instead, by market If English is your first language, Duolingo's own course is one of your options and the seven questions apply to it like any other app. For everyone else, the alternatives that actually appear when people search differ by language, so the localized versions of this page carry different tables. The shape is the same everywhere: the apps and sources that rank in that market, the seven questions, and the column that says what each one does better than Fasaha. For Turkish readers the set is Memrise, Mondly, Busuu, Beelinguapp, Quizlet and HelloTalk, plus the Turkish-language course sites and YouTube channels that already hold the beginner queries. For Uzbek readers the real competition is local: the Arab tilini oʻrganaman app built on the arabic.uz textbooks, the Javohir dictionary from Hilol, and AlifBee; the global apps barely appear and Duolingo has no Uzbek interface at all. For Spanish readers the set is Drops, Pimsleur, Memrise, Busuu, Babbel, AlifBee, Joode and the free Al Jazeera Learning Arabic, with Preply and italki as a separate category of lessons. For Russian readers it is Busuu, Mondly, Drops, Tobo, FunEasyLearn, Joode and the Quran Academy apps. Al Jazeera Learning Arabic deserves a sentence on its own: it is free, it has levelled reading across seven levels, a placement test and a tool that adds the short vowels to any text. It has no interface in Turkish, Uzbek or Spanish and no dictionary on tap, which is the gap Fasaha fills, but for a reader who only wants free graded text in English or Arabic it is the most serious option in this list. ## If you want a dialect, this is not your page Fusha is what the Qurʼan, the news, books and subtitles are written in, and it is understood across the Arabic-speaking world. A dialect is what people speak on one street. If your goal is Morocco or a Lebanese grandmother, start with a dialect resource and come back to fusha for reading. Which dialect fits which goal is a different article, and this site has one for Spain (fusha or darija) and one for Latin America (fusha or Levantine). ## The seven questions, as a checklist Open the app you are considering and answer each one from the app itself, not from its store page. Two "no" answers in the first three questions mean the app is not for you, whatever the reviews say. 1. 1Interface and explanations in my language?Not only menus: the meaning of a word, the grammar note and the mistake message. 2. 2Fusha or a dialect, and which one?Fusha for reading, the Qurʼan and media; a dialect for one region's street. 3. 3Real continuous text, or cards and drills?A story, an article, a transcript, not a sentence with three blanks. 4. 4A dictionary on tap inside the text?If you have to leave the app to look a word up, you will stop looking words up. 5. 5Root and pattern shown, or only translations?One root gives you a family of words; a translation gives you one. 6. 6Self-scheduling review, and offline?Spaced review you do not have to manage; a library that opens on a flight. 7. 7What is free, what is paid, and what does a year cost?Check the price in your own store, in your own currency, on the day you decide. ## Does Duolingo have an Arabic course at all? Yes, one: Arabic for English speakers. As of 2 September 2026 no other base language offers it; Turkish speakers, for example, get English, German and Russian. ## Does Duolingo have an Uzbek interface? No. Uzbek is not a base language on Duolingo at all, so no course, Arabic or otherwise, is available from Uzbek. ## Which dialect does Duolingo's Arabic course teach? Duolingo describes its Arabic course as Modern Standard Arabic in a lighter, spoken register rather than a regional dialect. That description is Duolingo's own; this page does not assess the course. ## Does Fasaha teach a dialect? No. Fasaha teaches Modern Standard Arabic (fusha) only. For Moroccan or Levantine Arabic, use a dialect resource and keep fusha for reading. ## Sources - [Duolingo course directions (public endpoint), read 2 September 2026](https://www.duolingo.com/api/1/version_info) - [Duolingo launches 148 new language courses, 30 April 2025](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2025/04/30/3071105/0/en/Duolingo-Launches-148-New-Language-Courses-Expands-Access-to-Popular-Languages-Including-Japanese-and-Korean.html) - [Duolingo blog: what makes Arabic hard](https://blog.duolingo.com/what-makes-arabic-hard-and-why-that-shouldnt-stop-you-from-learning-it/) ## About Fasaha Fasaha is a reading-first Arabic app. Every word in a story, a podcast, a video or an article opens into its meaning, root, pattern and family, and can be saved for spaced review. - Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android since 13 July 2026. - Interface in English, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Uzbek and Spanish. - Free to start; Premium opens the complete library and the stores handle billing. [![Download on the App Store](https://fasaha.app/assets/appstore-en-CVyK0T4N.svg)](https://apps.apple.com/app/id6754500701)[![Get it on Google Play](https://fasaha.app/assets/googleplay-en-BkUP0Br0.png)](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.fasaha.learn&referrer=utm_source%3Dfasaha_web%26utm_medium%3Dwebsite%26utm_campaign%3Dsite_blog) Next Try it on the page Four instruments from the app work on the home page: the level ladder, Memory, Say the line, the root map. Open the instruments ## All posts - [ك·ت·ب: one root, twelve wordsIf you learned كِتَاب as a flashcard, you learned one word. If you learned it as ك·ت·ب plus a pattern, you learned a family. Here is the family, every member tappable.Read this](https://fasaha.app/blog/arabic-root-ktb-one-root-twelve-words) - [There is no IELTS for Arabic. Here is what there is insteadEnglish proficiency testing converged: IELTS, TOEFL and Cambridge measure the same construct and are read interchangeably anywhere. Arabic never converged. What exists instead is about a dozen serious instruments built for incompatible purposes — and no two of them are substitutes for one another.Read this](https://fasaha.app/blog/arabic-proficiency-tests-compared)