Emirati Arabic · for the 10 million of us who came from somewhere else

You live here. You should sound like it.

You've been in the UAE a year, maybe five. You can order in English, work in English, live entirely in English — and everyone is too polite to make you do otherwise. So the Arabic never comes, and the room stays one step away.

Fasih is a language-learning assistant for the Arabic people actually speak here — the karak run, the office greeting, Thursday's meeting. It meets you where your day already happens, on WhatsApp and by voice, and measures what you retain like a science, not a game.

هَلا والله

hala wallah — “hey, welcome!” Your first phrase, 60 seconds after you start.

Join the waitlist

Founding cohort — limited seats, opening soon.

Try it — right here

Hear it. Say it. See what changed.

Four real phrases from the Emirati content, in the voice Fasih actually uses. Say one back and the page shows you your own timing against a native speaker's.

Native speaker
Scenes, not units

Your day, not a syllabus

No levels, no vocabulary lists, no Arabic you'd only ever read. Fasih teaches the scenes an expat week is actually made of — then brings each phrase back right before you'd forget it.

The karak run

بِجَم هذا؟

bcham hadha? — how much is this?

Order, pay, banter — the ten phrases your morning coffee run needs. Written kam, spoken cham: Fasih teaches the shifts that mark real Emirati speech.

Your Emirati colleagues

اشحالَك؟

esh7alak? — how are you? (to a woman: esh7alech?)

Greetings with the right register — including the feminine address forms learners rarely get right.

The meeting on Thursday

يَالله نِبدا الاجتِماع

yallah nabda el ejtimaa3 — right, let's start the meeting

Rehearsed the night before, spaced by the memory engine — so on Thursday you say it to a real person. The real world becomes the exam.

FasihTue 7:14
9of 45 automatic
The karak run
مشوار الكرك
10 phrases dueStart
You said Thursday's review is with Emirati clients — tonight we rehearse the greetings.
يلا
Product UI. Numbers from a simulated learner week run through the real engines — real scheduling, real grading.
Not another language app

A year of daily lessons, and still no conversation.

If you've tried, you know the shape of it: a long streak, a few hundred words, and the same silence when an Emirati colleague greets you. The apps aren't bad at what they measure. They just don't measure whether you can speak.

Most language apps
Fasih
Modern Standard Arabic — the language of news broadcasts, contracts and formal writing.
Emirati. The dialect spoken in the lift, at the counter, across the meeting table.
Tap the right tile from four options — recognition, which is far easier than speech.
You say it out loud — and it times how long you took to start.
Streaks, XP and a mascot that guilts you into opening the app.
Retention and automaticity. No streaks, no badges — numbers a sceptical adult can check.
A ten-minute session you have to remember to start.
It comes to you — a voice note on WhatsApp before you sleep, when it will actually stick.
A generic course, the same for everyone who installs it.
Scenes from your week — Thursday's client meeting is rehearsed on Wednesday night.
A finish line: complete the tree, close the app.
A companion to real teaching — built to sit beside an Emirati institute, not to replace one.

To be fair about it: a few apps do teach Gulf Arabic, and one or two teach it well. The difference isn't only which dialect — it's that Fasih is built to prove you retained it and can say it under time pressure, then to reach you in your week so the practice actually happens. Being taught and being able to speak are not the same achievement.

Where the practice finds you

It lives in the app you already have open.

The hardest part of learning a language isn't the learning — it's remembering to. And an expat week is not short of things to remember. So Fasih doesn't wait in an app you'd have to open: it reaches you on WhatsApp, where you already talk to your team, your building, and your family back home.

90% of phone users in the UAE are reachable on WhatsApp — installed and active
99% of the country is online — 11.3 million people, near-universal
0 new apps to install, accounts to make, or icons to lose on page three

A voice note is a rep

Reply to Fasih the way you'd reply to anyone — hold the mic, say the phrase, let go. It's graded by exactly the same engine as the app: same scoring, same schedule, same record of what you know.

Timed to matter, not to nag

A phrase before you sleep, because the night consolidates it. The morning's due phrases before your commute. That's the volume — a message when there's a reason, never a streak to protect.

What you say there stays yours

WhatsApp practice trains your own schedule and nothing else. It is never sold, never pooled into anyone's dataset, and never used for research unless you separately opt in.

Sources · WhatsApp reach: Infobip, The most popular messaging apps by country — share of phone users with the app installed and active. Connectivity: DataReportal, Digital 2026: The United Arab Emirates — 11.3 million internet users, 99.0% penetration, October 2025. Residents born abroad: approximately 88% of the UAE population, around 10 million people.

A voice note graded by the same engine as the app — no new install, no separate login.
Measured, never gamified

Numbers you can check, not points you collect

Cold-recall retention

We test what you remember days later, cold — no warm-up, no hints. Your retention number is a measured probe, not a feeling of progress.

Speaking automaticity

We time how fast the words leave your mouth. A phrase counts as automatic only when your speaking onset is fast and stable — fluency is measured, not felt.

Sleep-timed practice

Phrases practised shortly before sleep are retained better — the night consolidates them. So the schedule aims your reps at the evening window.

No streaks. No badges. Numbers a skeptical adult can believe.

Spaced retrieval, Hedges' g = 0.74 — Latimier, Peyre & Ramus (2021) · The testing effect — Roediger & Karpicke (2006) · Automaticity as speed plus stability — Segalowitz (2010) · Pre-sleep consolidation — Schreiner & Rasch (2015)

FasihDay 7 · evening
Recalled cold, day 7
82%
3
7
7
learning retrieval automatic
Quicker than last time · 0.8s
Automatic
One simulated learner week — real engines, real grading. The dashed line is the no-practice forgetting curve. Not human results yet; that test is next.
Privacy as pedagogy

It asks. It never listens.

No ambient microphone, no recording anyone who didn't consent — Fasih only hears what you choose to say to it. It asks about your day instead, because telling your own story in Arabic is the practice; being overheard is not.

And what it learns about you works for you — no one else. Nothing you say or share is retained for any purpose except improving your own Fasih: it never trains anyone else's models — and trains Fasih's own only if you explicitly join our opt-in Research Programme — is never sold or aggregated into a product, and deleting your account deletes all of it. Connect as much of your life as you want — or nothing at all.

Waitlist

Join the founding cohort

For people living in the UAE who'd rather not spend another year one step outside the room. Limited seats, opening soon — leave your email and we'll write when yours opens.

UAE-based. Your email is used for the waitlist only.