Arabic vs Hebrew: which should you learn?

Estimates for a native English speaker, following the US Foreign Service Institute’s groupings. Languages the Institute does not rank are placed beside their closest relatives. Your own pace will differ.

• You want reach across a vast region and strong demand in diplomacy, energy and translation.
• You will use it in more than twenty countries across the Middle East and North Africa.

Watch out for: spoken dialects differ from the formal written standard, and the sounds are new.

• You want a living language with a revived ancient literature, and a modern tech scene.
• You will use it in Israel.
• You want the faster path: Hebrew is the quicker of the two.

Watch out for: a right-to-left script and vowels that are usually left out of writing.

Arabic. It takes longer than European languages. The script runs right to left and the sounds are new. Sentence-by-sentence practice with audio makes both easier.

Hebrew. a right-to-left script and vowels that are usually left out of writing

In both, the quickest fix for pronunciation is the same: hear a whole sentence, say it out loud and check how close you were. That is the loop 4ToSpeak runs on every sentence.

Arabic and Hebrew are close relatives, so a lot carries over. Learn one, and the second takes noticeably fewer hours than starting from scratch. Start with whichever you will use sooner.

If you cannot decide, start both for a week at 15 minutes a day. After seven days you will know which one you look forward to, and motivation matters more than the difference in hours.

Start Arabic or start Hebrew, both free with no card.

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