The Original Audio

Some of our more distinctive materials at Lingualism are those in which participants–everyday people–record themselves speaking naturally. On the upside, this provides a unique opportunity to listen to authentic language and study it in detail with the transcriptions and translations. On the downside, the audio quality is often less than ideal since they are recording on their own smartphones and computers. Also, natural speech can be quite fast for learners, and some people speak especially fast. This, unfortunately, makes the materials less useful and more stressful for less advanced learners.

New Slow Audio

To make the materials more accessible and appropriate for learners at a wider range of levels, I have now had new audio for four titles (shown below) recorded by professional voice artists in a studio. They were instructed to speak very slowly and deliberately so that learners can easily hear the pronunciation of each word and mimic what they hear. So, now you can use either or both versions of the audio depending on your personal preferences and what is most appropriate for your level.

Download or Stream

Click on the titles below, then scroll down to the Audio section to download or stream the audio tracks. You will find both the original audio and the new slow audio tracks.

More to Come?

Most of our other materials for Egyptian Arabic already have audio recorded by voice artists. The exception is Arabic Voices 1 and Arabic Voices 2, but these books contain audio in dialects from various countries, so it would be difficult to get consistent studio-quality audio for all of the segments in the books.

In 2021, I replaced the audio for the Big Fat Book of Egyptian Arabic Verbs with newly recorded audio. Although the audio was originally recorded by in-studio voice artists, I had substantial feedback that they spoke too fast. I hope you find the new audio more useful!

Syrian Arabic Voices, Shwayy ‘An Haali, and Kameen Shwayy ‘An Haali also have audio recorded by participants in very natural language. Overall, the audio quality tends to be better than the original audio for the Egyptian projects, and logistically it would be difficult to find voice artists to re-record the materials since participants’ dialects vary from region to region in Lebanon and Syria. For these reasons, there are currently no plans to add slow audio versions to these materials.