Straight answers

Because Modern Standard Arabic is nobody’s mother tongue. MSA (Fus-ha) is the Arabic of newspapers, formal speeches, and almost every Arabic course ever made — but nobody orders coffee in it. Egyptian Arabic (Ammiya) is what people actually speak, and thanks to a century of Egyptian film and music it’s the dialect most understood across the Arab world. If your goal is to talk to people, Ammiya is the shortest path.

More than any other dialect. Egyptian cinema, TV and music have been the region’s default for decades, so speakers from Morocco to the Gulf grew up hearing it. It’s the closest thing Arabic has to a common spoken standard.

No. Every item shows English, transliteration and Arabic script together, so you can start speaking on day one and pick up the script as you go rather than as a prerequisite.

Arabic script is shown on every single word, sentence and verb form, so you’re reading it constantly in context. The app’s focus is speaking and understanding, not handwriting.

Yes — Level 1 is called True Beginner and assumes nothing. Lesson 1 is five everyday words; by Lesson 3 you’re ordering tea and coffee. If you already know some Egyptian Arabic, a placement step at the start puts you in the right level.

Four levels, 40 lessons, and 1,300 words, phrases and sentences — 359 nouns, 356 sentences, 301 adjectives, 175 verbs conjugated across all 8 pronouns, and 8 themed sets. Plus 400 quiz questions and 25 achievements.

The full syllabus is published here.

Real people. Every recording is a native Egyptian speaker — 3,261 clips in the app. There is no text-to-speech and no browser speech synthesis anywhere in the curriculum. You’re hearing how it’s genuinely said, including the sounds transliteration can’t capture.

Properly — which is what most apps skip. Every verb is taught across all eight pronouns, in the tense its level covers: past in Level 1, present in Level 2, future in Level 3, infinitive in Level 4.

That comes to 1,400 conjugated forms, and every single one is recorded. In the app you switch pronoun with chips and hear each form.

Short enough for a commute. A lesson is a sequence of topics — nouns, verbs, adjectives, sentences — with a checkpoint in the middle and a 10-question quiz at the end. Ten focused minutes a day is a realistic pace.

It’s saved. Review Mistakes collects everything you missed so you can practise exactly the words that are giving you trouble, rather than repeating what you already know.

Yes — genuinely, including the audio. Lessons and their recordings are cached to your device, and any progress you make offline syncs the next time you’re online. Useful on a plane, on the metro, and when you’re actually in Egypt on a patchy connection.

ماشي — Egyptian for “okay / got it / that works”. It’s one of the most-used words in the country, and it’s the first thing you’ll understand in a real conversation.

You earn XP for completing lessons and answering quiz questions, 100 XP for finishing a level, and a daily reward of 5–25 XP that grows with your streak. XP powers your daily goal, your weekly standing and your badges.

Each week your felucca — the Nile boat you customise when you sign up — races the other learners in your class, or everyone on your level if you’re learning solo. Where you finish decides whether you move up a league.

Five tiers: Scarab → Bastet → Sphinx → Obelisk → Pharaoh. Finish in the top 3 of your race and you’re promoted; the bottom 3 move down — though small groups (fewer than 8 learners) never relegate anyone.

25 achievements, from First Steps for your first lesson to Living Dictionary for 500 words, plus streak, perfect-score and quiz milestones. Four of them are cities — Alexandria, Cairo, Giza, Luxor — one for each level you complete.

Yes — the streak counts consecutive days of practice. It’s shown as a rising sun, and your daily reward grows the longer you keep it.

Yes, and it’s a real one. The first lesson of every level is free — all four of them — so you can try Advanced before you decide rather than only the beginning. Streaks, quizzes, badges and the race are all included free.

All units and levels — the full journey — plus unlimited daily translations, and offline lessons and full reports.

$59.99 a year or $14.99 a month in the US, with local pricing in 180+ countries — the app always shows your own store’s price before you confirm. Every new subscriber gets 7 days free.

Any time, through the App Store or Google Play. Cancelling doesn’t cut you off immediately — you keep Pro until the period you’ve paid for ends. If a renewal payment fails, you keep access during a grace period while the store retries.

Yes. Your progress is tied to your account, so signing in on another device picks up exactly where you left off. Use Restore Purchases to re-activate Pro on a new device.

Yes — Settings → Delete account. Everything is removed immediately: your profile, progress, quiz history and activity.

You share your personal join code. The student enters it in the app, you get a join request, and once you approve it they’re on your roster and can receive assignments.

At class level: class activity (who is practising and who has gone quiet), class skills and class trend. Then a per-student report with period filtering, which you can export and share.

The dashboard also surfaces a needs attention list, so you don’t have to go looking for the students who have stalled.

Yes. An assignment is built from the same Levels → Lessons structure your students see: give it a title, pick any lessons, pick whole classes or individual students, and set a due date.

Open the assignment afterwards and you can see exactly who has finished and who hasn’t started.

Yes — classroom and school plans exist, sold by seat. Get in touch for pricing.

Not yet. Mashi is in final preparation for the App Store and Google Play. Leave your email and we’ll tell you the day it’s live.

iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets.