ahmeddabak Writing natural, correct Arabic
This skill helps you produce Arabic that a native editor would accept: grammatically correct, idiomatic, free of typos, and free of the tell-tale signs of machine translation. The single biggest failure mode is translationese — transferring English structure word-for-word instead of re-composing the meaning in Arabic. Translate ideas, not words.
Workflow
- Pick the register and dialect. Default to Modern Standard Arabic (MSA / الفصحى) for anything formal: news, documents, legal/medical text, UI body copy, subtitles. Use a dialect (Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Maghrebi) or light "white Arabic" only when the context is conversational, marketing, social, or the user asks for it. When unsure, ask which dialect/market — never silently mix dialect into formal MSA. See register-and-style.md.
- Compose, don't transfer. Read the whole source sentence, understand the meaning, then write it the way an Arabic speaker would — usually a verb-first sentence with the right collocation — rather than mapping English word order and prepositions.
- Self-check every output against the two checklists below before returning it.
- Open the relevant reference file whenever you are unsure about a specific rule. The reference files hold the detail; this page is just the map.
Top correctness checklist (apply to every Arabic output)
- Non-human plurals take feminine-singular agreement. الكتبُ جديدةٌ ("the books are new"), السياراتُ سريعةٌ — not جُدُد/سريعات. This is the #1 error. (→ grammar.md)
- Verb–subject order changes agreement. Verb before subject (VSO, the neutral order) stays singular and agrees only in gender: ذهب الطلابُ / ذهبت الطالباتُ. Subject before verb (SVO) takes full agreement: الطلابُ ذهبوا. (→ grammar.md)
- Iḍāfa (الإضافة): the first noun (مضاف) takes no ال and no tanwin; the second is genitive. كتابُ الطالبِ, not الكتابُ الطالبِ. No adjective between the two parts. (→ grammar.md)
- Adjectives follow the noun and agree on all four axes: gender, number, case, definiteness. البنتُ الكبيرةُ (both definite) vs البنتُ كبيرةٌ ("the girl is big"). (→ grammar.md)
- Numbers 3–10 reverse gender (polarity) and take a plural genitive noun: ثلاثةُ رجالٍ, ثلاثُ فتياتٍ. 11–99 take a singular accusative (tamyīz): عشرون كتابًا. (→ grammar.md)
- Hamza sits on the seat of the strongest vowel (kasra ئ > damma ؤ > fatha أ > sukūn ء): رئيس، مسؤول، سأل، شيء. Distinguish wasl (bare ا) from qatʿ (أ/إ) with the و-test. (→ orthography.md)
- ة vs ه (add a suffix: /t/ → ة, /h/ → ه) and ى vs ي (trace the root; على the preposition vs عليّ the name). (→ orthography.md)
- Use Arabic punctuation glyphs ، ؛ ؟ (not , ; ?). No space before a mark, one after. In lists, repeat و instead of using commas. (→ orthography.md)
- Default to undiacritized text; add ḥarakāt only to remove genuine ambiguity, but always keep a meaning-distinctive shadda (درس vs درّس). Never use kashida (ـــ) to pad. (→ orthography.md)
- Right collocations and prepositions. اتخذ قرارًا (not عمل قرارًا), أثّر في (not على in formal MSA), حصل على. (→ collocations.md, translationese.md)
The AI-Arabic "smell test" (avoid these tells)
If your draft contains several of these, it reads as machine-made. Fix each:
- من قبل + passive → use the active voice and name the agent. ✗ تمت مراجعة الخطة من قبل اللجنة → ✓ راجعت اللجنةُ الخطة.
- قام/قم بـ + verbal noun → use the single verb. ✗ قام بزيارة → ✓ زار. ✗ قم بإدخال كلمة المرور → ✓ أدخِل كلمة المرور (or the noun إدخال… for a UI label).
- الخاص بك for every "your" → use the attached suffix. ✗ الحساب الخاص بك → ✓ حسابك.
- Overused يتم / تمّ as an all-purpose passive → prefer a real verb or the internal passive. ✗ يتم استخدام الأداة → ✓ تُستخدَم الأداة.
- حيث as a catch-all "where/which/whereby" → use الذي/التي, إذ, لأنّ, بحيث, or بينما, and reserve حيث for an actual place/locus.
- The copular calque "الهدف من … هو …" → front the verb. ✓ يهدف هذا البحث إلى…
- Agreement that drifts over distance (a feminine/plural subject far from its verb defaulting to masculine) — re-check agreement across the whole sentence.
- Connector over-explicitation — stacking بالإضافة إلى ذلك، علاوة على ذلك، من ناحية أخرى. Native Arabic links clauses with و / فـ / ثم; use heavier connectors sparingly and precisely.
- Doubled كلما ("the more… the more") → use it once: كلما أعطيتَ، أخذت.
Where to look (reference files)
| Read this when… | File |
|---|---|
| Anything about grammar: word order, case (إعراب), agreement, iḍāfa, numbers | references/grammar.md |
| Spelling: hamza, ة/ه, ى/ي, ا/أ, tanwin, punctuation, typos, diacritics | references/orthography.md |
| Removing MT/AI tells; English→Arabic structural pitfalls | references/translationese.md |
| Choosing the natural Arabic verb/phrase instead of a calque | references/collocations.md |
| Register choice, connectors, naturalness, tone/transcreation | references/register-and-style.md |
| Names, transliteration, numerals, dates, currency/units, bidi | references/conventions.md |
| Writing in Egyptian Arabic | references/dialects/egyptian.md |
| Writing in Levantine Arabic | references/dialects/levantine.md |
| Writing in Gulf Arabic | references/dialects/gulf.md |
| Writing in Maghrebi Arabic | references/dialects/maghrebi.md |
Register / dialect decision guide
- MSA (الفصحى): legal, medical, academic, official, news, manuals, B2B docs, subtitles, and most UI body text. The safe default.
- Dialect or "white Arabic": ads, social posts, voiceover, chat, conversational UX, or whenever the user names a market/dialect. Pick the dialect for the target country; do not ship one Arabic for all 22 countries.
- Never leak dialect lexis or grammar (e.g. عايز، بدّي، مش، بيكتب، هيروح) into formal MSA, and never mix two dialects in one piece. Keep one register and one dialect throughout.
When proofreading existing Arabic, read orthography.md and grammar.md and report fixes in pass order: hamza → ة/ه and ى/ي → tanwin → spacing → punctuation → agreement → consistency.