What is Arabic All The Time?

Arabic All The Time is a comprehensible input video library for Arabic: hundreds of leveled videos you can actually understand, in Modern Standard and Levantine, with a new one every day. We produce Arabic designed to be understood from your very first video, leveled from absolute beginner to advanced. No translation. No grammar tables. No vocabulary lists. Your brain acquires Arabic the way it acquired your first language, through context.

Nothing like this existed for Arabic when we started building it. Now it does.

What Arabic All The Time Is

Arabic All The Time (AATT) is a video platform for acquiring Arabic through comprehensible input, which means Arabic you understand even though you don't know all the words, because the pictures, the context and the way it's spoken carry the meaning. The library covers absolute beginner through advanced in two of the most useful varieties for learners, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Levantine Arabic. The two are registers of one language, the formal one and the spoken one, and the hours you put into either carry over to the other.

If you're looking for the Arabic version of Dreaming Spanish, this is it. Built from scratch for Arabic, by native speakers, on the same idea that forty years of second language acquisition research supports.

Founded: September 2024
Library: Hundreds of videos across five levels, in both MSA and Levantine
Cadence: A new video every single day
Mission: Build a library of Arabic comprehensible input that covers every level and every major variety

Why This Didn't Exist Before

Comprehensible input works for any language. It has been shown at scale in Spanish, Thai, French, Mandarin and more. For Arabic, one of the most spoken languages in the world, the library was empty.

The honest reason is that making Arabic comprehensible to English speakers is much harder than making Spanish comprehensible. Spanish and English share thousands of cognates, words with the same Latin roots. An English speaker hearing universidad, importante or familia gets half the language for free. Arabic has none of that. No shared roots, no familiar sounds, no free vocabulary. Every word has to be built from context.

So every one of our videos takes more work, more visuals, more repetition, more thought about what a learner can and can't follow. Before Arabic All The Time, nobody was willing to put in that effort at the scale Arabic needs. We are.

The Story

I'm Hasan. I learned Spanish purely by listening. Never took a class, never opened a textbook. Watched videos I could understand until I could hold a conversation, added speaking practice later, moved to Granada and lived the language.

When I looked for the same thing in Arabic, my native language, it didn't exist.

So I built it. I run the whole operation. I film the videos, produce the content, manage the team, and personally run every crosstalk session. I'm the person on screen, the person behind the camera, and the person you'll be speaking with if you book a session.

Read the full story

What Is Comprehensible Input?

Comprehensible input is language you understand through context, not translation. It's the foundation of modern second language acquisition theory, developed by the linguist Stephen Krashen through his Input Hypothesis.

Think about how children learn. They hear thousands of hours of language paired with objects, actions, faces and repetition. Nobody hands them grammar rules. Their brains acquire the language automatically.

Adults can do the same thing. The key is input that is challenging but understandable, what Krashen calls "i+1". Your brain does the pattern recognition. Grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation come with it, in the right order, as a by-product of understanding. Speaking then takes its own short block of practice once you have enough input behind you, and in that order it comes out sounding like Arabic.

This isn't fringe theory. It's backed by forty years of peer-reviewed research in second language acquisition. We're doing it for Arabic.

Read more about our approach · See the research

The Video Library

The library is organized into five levels, from absolute beginner to advanced. Every video is produced with full visual support, icons, illustrations, demonstrations and animated cues, so meaning comes through context, not subtitles. You never need to translate. You just watch.

Beginner A1

For people who have never heard a word of Arabic. Speech is slow. Visuals do the heavy lifting. Vocabulary is simple and heavily repeated, so your brain starts recognizing patterns from the first minute. A1 is where comprehensible input does its hardest job in Arabic, giving you a foothold in a language that shares nothing with English. If you've ever thought Arabic was too hard to start, start here and see what happens.

Beginner A2

Once the sounds and rhythms of Arabic feel familiar, A2 brings richer vocabulary, simple stories and slightly longer videos. The pace stays comfortable and the visual support stays strong. Arabic moves from a wall of unfamiliar sound into something your brain can follow.

Intermediate B1

Real content at a manageable pace. Personal stories, cultural topics, everyday scenarios. You follow most of what's happening on your own, with visuals filling in what the words don't. This is where listening stamina builds, with longer videos, more natural speech and less hand-holding.

Intermediate B2

Near-natural speed Arabic on real topics: culture, history, daily life, ideas, conversations. This is where Arabic stops feeling like a subject you study and starts feeling like a language you live in.

Advanced C1

Full-speed MSA on nuanced topics, history, literature, philosophy, culture, current ideas. For learners closing the last gap before native media. C1 is where Arabic becomes a tool for thinking, not just communicating.

Browse the full library

MSA and Levantine: Start Wherever, Just Start

Forget the MSA-versus-dialect debate. It's the wrong question.

Arabs themselves acquire their spoken variety first, naturally, by listening, and pick up MSA later through news, books and formal speech. Nobody sits down and studies MSA as a foundation. The language comes through input.

So for learners, what matters is that you start, and that you expose yourself to both. The library is built for that. Lean into MSA, lean into Levantine, or mix them freely. All three work.

The two have different strengths.

Levantine Arabic is the spoken variety of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. It's the language of everyday life, what people actually speak at home, in the market and in the café. If you want to follow daily conversation, make friends, or connect with Arabic-speaking communities, Levantine is where that lives.

Modern Standard Arabic is the formal register used across all 22 Arab countries. It's the language of news, literature, speeches, abstract ideas and the Quran. If you want to read, follow media, or engage with intellectual content, MSA is essential.

Egyptian Arabic, the most widely understood dialect in the Arab world, is next on the roadmap.

Full guide: MSA or dialect?

How It Works

Pick a video at your level. Watch something you can mostly understand. Let your brain do the rest.

No studying. No memorization. No flashcards. No grammar drills.

Track your hours, not your lessons. Progress shows up as rising comprehension. Words you never tried to memorize suddenly stick, and content that felt hard last month feels easy today. After a few hundred hours, Arabic starts to flow, and that's the point to add a short block of speaking practice.

Most learners follow everyday conversation somewhere between 500 and 1,000 hours. Not quick. But it's what lasting fluency actually costs, in any language, by any route. The full roadmap is here.

See the full user guide

Who This Is For

Arabic All The Time works for you if you want to understand Arabic, not just pass a test on it. If you can commit real time, because this takes hundreds of hours. If you prefer natural acquisition over grammar study. If you're starting from zero, or you hit a wall with traditional methods. If you want MSA, Levantine, or both.

It probably isn't for you if you need fluency in three months (that doesn't exist, by any route), if you prefer classrooms and grammar notes, or if you expect results from minimal investment.

Pricing

Free: A generous selection of videos with permanent access
Monthly: $24.99
Annual: $179.88 a year, which works out to $14.99 a month

Premium unlocks the full library, every daily release and progress tracking. Every membership directly funds more production, which is why the library grows as fast as it does.

See pricing details

Crosstalk Sessions

Want to practice with a real human? Book a one-on-one crosstalk session with me. I speak Arabic, you speak English. Pure comprehensible input, calibrated live to your exact level, with no pressure to produce Arabic before you're ready.

First session: free (30 minutes)
After that: $45 per 50 minutes, or $400 for ten

Book a session

The Team

Hasan, Founder (Montreal)

Built Arabic All The Time after acquiring Spanish purely through listening. Syrian, native Arabic speaker, former engineering consultant. Runs the entire operation: films videos, produces content, manages the team, and runs every crosstalk session personally.

Batoul, Presenter (Syria)

Native Syrian Arabic speaker and core on-screen presenter. Her natural delivery is a big part of why our Arabic feels real. She has a large catalog of videos out and many more to come.

Oussama, Video Editor (Syria)

Handles post-production: the icons, illustrations and on-screen visuals that make the content comprehensible without translation.

What Makes This Different

Most Arabic resources teach you about Arabic. Conjugation tables, vocabulary lists, rules to memorize, with translation exercises and flashcards on top. Some add a little listening as a feature.

We give your brain what it needs to acquire Arabic, the same way you acquired your first language. You don't study Arabic All The Time. You watch it. The acquisition happens by itself when you understand what you're hearing.

That's the whole model. It's simple, it's backed by decades of research, and nobody had built it for Arabic. The right fit depends on what you want, and if what you want is to understand Arabic, this is built for exactly that.

Third-Party Reviews of Arabic All The Time

If you'd like an independent view before deciding, All Language Resources published a mini review of Arabic All The Time covering the approach, the library, pricing, and how it compares with other Arabic resources like LingQ and ArabicPod101. Their review calls it a "Dreaming Spanish alternative for Arabic", which is the comparison most comprehensible input learners are looking for.

For a broader view of the Arabic learning landscape, apps, courses, podcasts and tutoring, ALR also maintains a directory of Arabic learning resources.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Arabic All The Time?

Arabic All The Time is a video platform for acquiring Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine Arabic through comprehensible input. It holds hundreds of videos you can actually understand, leveled from absolute beginner to advanced, with a new one every day.

Who runs Arabic All The Time?

Hasan Alhamwi, a Syrian native speaker and former engineering consultant based in Montreal, founded it in September 2024 after acquiring Spanish purely through listening. He films, produces and runs every crosstalk session himself, with a team from Syria producing and editing the videos. The platform is bootstrapped and independent.

Is there a Dreaming Spanish for Arabic?

Yes. Arabic All The Time is built on the same idea, acquiring the language through videos you understand, made for Arabic by native speakers, in both Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine, two registers of one language.

What is comprehensible input?

Comprehensible input is language you understand through context rather than translation. In our videos, meaning comes through visuals, gestures, demonstrations and repetition, and your brain acquires Arabic the way it acquired your first language. The idea comes from the linguist Stephen Krashen and is supported by forty years of second language acquisition research. Full explanation here

Can I start as a complete beginner?

Yes. Beginner A1 is built for people who have never heard a word of Arabic. Slow speech, heavy visual support, simple repeated vocabulary. Start there. Browse beginner videos

Which Arabic do you teach?

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Levantine Arabic (Shami). MSA is the formal standard understood across all 22 Arab countries, the language of news, literature and formal speech. Levantine is the spoken variety of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. Egyptian Arabic is next on the roadmap.

Should I start with MSA or a dialect?

Start with what matches your goal, and start now. Levantine is where the beginner-friendly content is and it's the closest spoken variety to MSA, so most people start there. If your focus is news, abstract topics or religious texts, start with MSA. Mix freely if you want both. The worst thing you can do is spend weeks deciding instead of watching. Full guide here

How long does it take to learn Arabic with comprehensible input?

Conversational ability: 500 to 1,000 hours of listening. Comfort across native media: 1,700 to 2,500 hours. It sounds long because it is, and these are the real numbers for lasting fluency in any language, by any route. Traditional study doesn't work faster. It only feels faster because you're doing something. The full roadmap · Honest timeline here

Do I need to study Arabic grammar?

No. Your brain acquires Arabic grammar from input. After hundreds of hours of listening you know what sounds right, the same way you do in your native language. Grammar study can be interesting after you've acquired the language, as a way to understand what you already know. It isn't needed to get there. The neuroscience behind this

Does comprehensible input actually work for Arabic?

Yes. It's how humans acquire any language, and it has been shown at scale in Spanish, Thai, Mandarin and more. There's no reason it would work differently for Arabic. It hadn't taken off for Arabic because the content didn't exist, and producing it is harder for Arabic than for languages that share roots with English. Now it exists. What the research shows

Why is Arabic harder to teach through comprehensible input than Spanish?

English and Spanish share thousands of cognates, words with the same Latin roots. An English speaker hearing universidad, importante or familia gets half the meaning for free. Arabic shares no vocabulary with English, so every word has to be built from pure context, visuals and repetition. That's why producing good Arabic comprehensible input is harder, and why nobody had done it at scale.

Will this help me read the Quran?

Yes, meaningfully, if you commit the hours. Quranic Arabic is demanding even for native speakers. Put hundreds of hours of listening in before you try to read; that's what produces lasting understanding and accurate pronunciation, and it's the base that makes Quranic study go far faster.

Will this help me talk to Arabic-speaking friends, family or clients?

Yes. Between 500 and 1,000 hours of listening you'll follow real conversation on everyday topics. Speaking needs its own practice on top of that, and in that order the pronunciation comes out right, because you've heard correct Arabic thousands of times first.

Do you offer live sessions?

Yes. I personally run every one-on-one crosstalk session. The first session is free (30 minutes), then $45 per 50 minutes or $400 for ten. Book a session

Where to Find Us

Main site: arabicallthetime.com
Video library: arabicallthetime.com/videos
Contact: [email protected]

Bottom Line

We built a library of Arabic you can actually understand, hundreds of videos in Modern Standard and Levantine, with a new one every day. It isn't finished. It grows every single day. If you've ever tried to learn Arabic and bounced off textbooks, apps or classes, this is how languages are actually acquired, finally built for ours.

Start watching free videos · See pricing · Read our approach