Learn French in Arabic — Free French Course for Arabic Students

Last updated: September 2026

Learn French in Arabic, free — 45 lessons from A0 to A2. Arabic has no p, no v and no nasal vowels, so this course builds those three from nothing, in the order that works.

The two consonants Arabic does not have

French has a p sound and Arabic does not. Standard Arabic writes borrowed p words with ب, the b letter, which is why the same name can be pronounced two ways by two speakers of the same dialect. French gives you no such freedom: père, pain and parler all need a real p, or they turn into bère, bain and barler.

French also has a v sound and Arabic does not. It is written with ف, the f letter — the month of November is spelled نوفمبر and comes out as either nofember or novambar depending on who is reading it. In French those are different words: vous against fous, and voir against fois.

There is a reason these two feel foreign rather than simply unfamiliar. Arabic lost its old p sound long ago, and it shifted to f, so neither p nor v has ever been part of the native system you learned as a child. They are not sounds you have forgotten; they are sounds you never had. That means deliberate practice, not exposure, and the site's pronunciation coach drills exactly this pair.

Four minimal pairs carry most of the work. For p against b: pain against bain, and poire against boire. For v against f: vous against fous, and voir against fois. Say each pair out loud ten times before moving on.

The vowels, and why they are the hardest part

French nasal vowels do not exist in Arabic at all. The vowel system of Standard Arabic is a, i and u, each in a short and a long form, and every one of them is made through the mouth. French on, an, in and un send the air through the nose while the mouth stays open, and there is nothing in Arabic to build on when you try to copy them.

This is the opposite situation from a Hindi, Bengali or Nepali speaker, who arrives with nasal vowels already in place and finds them the easy part. For an Arabic speaker they are the part that takes longest, and they are worth more practice time than anything else on this page.

French also builds two vowels with rounded lips at the front of the mouth: the u of tu, rue and dessus, and the eu of deux, peu and heureux. Arabic front vowels are i and a, both unrounded, so both of these are new as well.

Keep French u and French ou apart from day one, because they carry meaning. tu and tout are different words, rue and roue are different words, and dessus and dessous are opposites. Getting them confused is not a small accent problem — it changes what you have said.

What Arabic already gives you

Start with the sound most learners fear: the French r. It is made at the back of the throat, in the same region where Arabic makes غ and خ. You already have a sound there, and you can feel where it lives. An English speaker has nothing in that place at all and often spends months on it. You are starting much closer than most of the world.

Arabic also has a larger consonant inventory than most European languages, so an unfamiliar consonant is not frightening to you in the way it is to an English speaker. You will meet two in French, p and v, and once they are built they are built.

Reading French is easier than it looks as well. French spelling is not phonetic, but the alphabet is only 26 letters, none of them changes shape depending on where it sits in a word, and there are no case endings to learn.

The one thing you do have to keep separate is direction. Arabic runs right to left and French runs left to right, but the site handles it for you: choose Arabic and the interface flips to right-to-left, while the French examples stay in Latin letters the way French is actually written.

Two habits worth unlearning early

French j in je, jour and déjà is the sound of the s in pleasure. Arabic ج is an affricate, closer to a hard j, so je tends to come out as dje. The two are close enough that a learner can stop hearing the difference and far enough apart that a French speaker notices it immediately.

French t, d and s are plain and light. Arabic also has emphatic versions of those sounds, made with a tightened throat, and it is easy to carry that emphasis across into French. The result is French that sounds heavier and more pressed than it should. Lightening those consonants is a small change with a large effect on how you are heard.

Neither of these is a mistake that breaks meaning, which is exactly why they survive for years. They are worth twenty deliberate minutes in your first month and almost impossible to fix in your third year.

Arabic students: use this as a course, not a website

For many Arabic speakers the reward for A2 arrives quickly, because French is still widely used in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, in education, administration and the media. For others it is the language of study, work or family in France or Quebec. Either way this is not a distant skill you will use one day.

The course follows the Common European Framework, so the levels mean something outside this site: A0 and A1 after the first six parts, then the start of A2.

Every lesson closes with a ten-question quiz and an answer key, and there are seven tests plus a final A1 exam. They are built the way an exam's questions are — a stem, four options, and a key that explains why. If you are studying French formally, that is the part worth working through honestly rather than clicking past.

Be clear about the ceiling before you begin: this reaches A2. It does not teach B1 or above, it does not go into literature, and it is not preparation for DELF B2. It also will not help you fill in an application form, write a statement of purpose, or answer questions about studying or settling abroad, because those depend on rules that change — check official sources. What is here is the A0 to A2 foundation, free, in order, with no gaps.

Turning the site into Arabic

Open any page, tap the globe button at the top right, and pick Arabic. The layout turns right-to-left immediately, and your choice is saved on your own device, so you only do it once.

Arabic is not built into the site the way Urdu is. When you choose it, the English text of a lesson is sent to a free translation service and the Arabic comes back, then it is saved in your own browser so the same text is never sent twice. The privacy page names both services.

The site is straight about the trade-off: machine translation is usually helpful, but it can be clumsy with short phrases, word order and polite forms. Treat the English line as the source of truth. If a translated line and the English line disagree, follow the English.

Your first two weeks

Day one: finish Lesson 1 in one sitting. It takes about half an hour, and afterwards you can greet somebody and spell your own name in French.

From there, fifteen to twenty minutes a day. Short and daily beats one long session a week, and it beats it by a wide margin when the work is mouth positions rather than vocabulary.

Give the nasal vowels their own five minutes every single day. Hum a note with your mouth closed, then open your mouth while keeping the hum going — that is the sensation French on, an and in are built on. Then practise pain and bon, and tu against tout for the front rounded vowel.

Keep a second short drill for p against b and v against f: pain against bain, poire against boire, vous against fous. Two minutes is enough, but do it every day, because these are sounds your mouth has never made and they need repetition rather than understanding.

Mark each lesson as done when you finish it; the progress page keeps the count and the roadmap shows what comes next. If something is wrong — a translation, an answer key, an audio file — use the feedback page; corrections help the next Arabic speaker who arrives.

Learn French in Urdu — Free French Course for Pakistani Students · Learn French in Hindi — Free French Course for Indian Students · Learn French in Nepali — Free French Course for Nepali Students · Learn French in Bangla (Bengali) — Free French Course for Bengali Students · Learn French in Arabic — Free French Course for Arabic Students · About this course · Contact · Privacy policy · Terms of use · Accuracy disclaimer · Français A0 → A2