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Great Trick For Boosting Your Vocab Fast

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Before starting, it's important that you have the following pre-requites:

1) At least a rudimentary understanding of sarf

2) A very basic vocabulary bank in your head. A few thousand words is good enough. This way you kinda have a good idea of how words are formed and you're familiar with various forms of words already

3) An English-Arabic dictionary (you can probably just use Google Translate but investing 10 bucks might be better for you in the long-run.

4) A really good Arabic dictionary like Hans Wehr or al-Mawrid

So first of all, try to master the vocabulary around you. Stuff that that you see on a daily basis (this helps cement the words easier).

For example, you're on your computer. Look down and notice that there's a wire there. Now look up the word "wire" and you'll see that:

سِــلْــك ج أَسْــلاك=wire

So take out your trusty Arabic dictionary and look up the root س-ل-ك, go down to سلك (the noun) and you see that the general meaning is a wire/cable/line/string/thread (you get the general idea)

Now (i'm using a Hans Wehr btw), keep looking and you'll see a useful term:

لا سلكي=Wireless

So now use this in practical terms. Is your internet silki or la silki?

So keep picking out useful vocabulary that is related to the word that you just looked up.

Now go up to the verb of س-ل-ك. Learn the maadhi, the mudhari3 and the masdar and look at the general meanings. If it's too much to learn all of those meanings, then pick out the "general meaning" of the word such as 'to adopt a course' (and know that this can be applied literally and figuratively in terms of behavior)

And from that, we can go back to the nouns and see several relevant words like:





(keep the meanings very general and simple at first. here you're just trying to increase your vocab. going into linguistics can happen later on)

And from simply looking up the word "wire", we were able to acquire about half a dozen other words with it (because it's from the same root, it's simply to just derive these words). And best of all, since we see wires every single day, we can help keep these meanings in our head (also try to stop thinking of the word "wire". think سلك!)

And the more you do this and increase your vocabulary, the easier and easier it will get and the more vocabulary you can absorb. Just like when a person wants to memorize the Quran, it might be hard for them to memorize more than a few ayats. But after a lot of time memorizing, they get ot the point where they can memorize a page or two or more a day fairly easily.

So for a recap, here are the steps:

1) Look up a common every-day word that you see just about every day

2) Learn its singular and plural

3) Learn the nouns that are related to it

4) Look up the verb that is derived from the same root and learn the various forms and meanings that you'll find useful

5) Keep reminding yourself those meanings when you common across that common day thing to cement this stuff into your head

Edited by ImamAliLover
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Did Gabriel (as) send you, cause I was just asking him recently to help in my speech, both English and Arabic? lol

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Lately i've been developing another method for those who are intermediate and looking to phase into fluent.

By now, you should be reading in Arabic, listening to Arabic, speaking Arabic, thinking in Arabic, writing in Arabic, etc

But you're probably finding yourself having to look up a word every sentance or two or at least one in a page (depending on what you're reading). That's still not bad at all, but you want to take that final leap into fluency.

How can you do it? Go through the dictionary.

So, start with the letter alif and learn all of the words that start with أب then all of the letters that start with أت then all of the words that start with أث, etc until you finish the letter alif.

Then go to the letter baa and learn all of the words that start with بأ then بت then بث then بج etc etc until you finish the entire dictionary.


- You do NOT need to learn all of the words (ignore what i said about learning ALL) of them. You have to learn smart so i would advise you to skip these:

1) The words you already know in Arabic

2) The words that you alread know in English (like استراتجيّة is strategy)

3) The words where you already know like 5 other different words that say that same basic thing.

4) If the word is a noun, the Google Image it. If you see it on Google Images, then learn it! If you don't see it on Google Images, then look up the word on Google Translate or Sakhr Dictionary. If you don't find it in either of them, or it looks really obscure, then don't bother.

5) If the word is a verb, then Google the word to see how Arabs are using it on the internet. If you're not really getting many clear results, then look it up on Google Translate or Sakhr Dictionary. If you don't find it in either of them, or it looks really obscure, then don't bother.

6) In reagards to #4 and 5, i would also look up the translation in these two dictionaries. If you don't find your word there, then don't bother with it.

- I would get a notebook and write these down so you can go back to them when you want

- Write all of the vowels (i didn't here because i was lazy)

- Take it easy and learn at your pace. Learning a langauge should be natural and enjoyable, not a chore. i personally find it difficult to learn more than 10-15 words a day.

- Use these words in sentances and in your daily life. Maybe make a game out of it or try to make a poem out of it. Again, have fun while learning this language!

So basically, try to learn every single word, except the ones that you already know (in either English or Arabic), and the ones that look really obscure.

i would get a notebook and spend every day doing a little bit. And trust me, it's a lot less than what you're probably thinking.

For example for أب, this is what i marked down:




أبر يأبر الأبْر

أبّر يُؤَبّر التأبير

إبريق ج. أباريق

إبْـزيم ج. أبازيم

أبق يأبِق الإباق

أبّـن يُؤِبِّـن التأبين

Meanings in order:

Alphabet (الحروف الأبجدية)

Yearn/long for

to poke (ie someone). (for some reason [Edited Out] is edited out here so i had to write poke instead of the more accurate translation...) From it is the word إبرة (needle)

To pollinate

Jug. That's the thing you find in some mosque bathrooms to wash yourself with


To runaway (ie a slave)

To eulogize/obituary

And that's good enough for one day.

A lot of others are much less, for example, the ony real words worth learning for أت that i saw was إتاوة (duty/toll/tribune/etc) and مأتَم (should be famillar to every Shia lol)

im using Hans Wehr by the way.

So insha'Allah i hope other can benefit from this. Like i said, i would recommend it for those who are intermediate/advanced and are looking to break into fluent

Edited by ImamAliLover

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Something i forgot to mention in my above post. Don't bother with words that you are almost 100% that you're never going to use, like the names of the months in the Coptic calender, or Arabic Christian terms, or advanced medical terms, etc

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