About Fi Kalam

For content suggestions, media and collaboration inquiries, or just to say hello, email us at fikalam@outlook.com

The goal of Fi Kalam is to make multimedia Arabic resources more accessible to English speaking Arabic language learners at a range of levels. We do this by creating English/Arabic vocabulary lists, transcriptions and translations, and other supplemental material for Arabic language content. Most of the media we feature was created by and for Arabic speakers. We focus primarily on resources in the Levantine dialect, since that’s what we know best. Essentially, we’ve created the content that we were looking for as language learners.

About us (Nora and Charlotte)

Years ago, we met while living in Amman and taking the same Arabic classes. Both of us had arrived in Jordan with basic Fusha (formal Arabic) skills and rusty to no Amiyyah (spoken Arabic) knowledge. We quickly realized that Fusha wasn’t that useful in daily life so, after a while, we gave up doing our Fusha homework to spend (too much) time translating Jordanian songs and watching local TV shows.

After the semester ended, we kept in touch and returned to the MENA/SWANA region to work, study, and reunite with friends. While back in the States, we tried to keep up our Amiyyah skills but struggled to find quality resources for intermediate and advanced learners. Everything seemed to be either basic phrases or content for native speakers, with little in between.

We continued searching - without success - for a collection of multimedia Arabic resources with English study guide materials. Until one fateful day at a coffee shop in Alaska, we decided that perhaps we should create that resource we’d been looking for. And so, Fi Kalam was born.

Fi Kalam is a labor of love for us. We fit in the time to work on it around our day jobs and other responsibilities. The only income we make is off your donations and the occasional hired gig. If Fi Kalam is a useful resource to you and you are willing and able, please support us through the button below. If not, thanks for joining us nonetheless!