Arabic and Hebrew: How Similar Are They Really?

Short answer: Arabic and Hebrew are closely related. Both are Semitic languages, both build words from three-consonant roots, and many basic words are clearly the same word: salām and shalom ("peace"), bayt and bayit ("house"), anā and ani ("I"). But they are not mutually intelligible. A speaker of one will spot familiar words and patterns in the other, yet cannot follow a normal conversation without studying it. Think of them as cousins like Spanish and Italian, only further apart.

The two languages also use different alphabets. Hebrew has 22 letters that stand separately, while Arabic has 28 letters that join together. Both are written from right to left, and both normally leave out the short vowels.

Same family, different branches

Linguists group Arabic and Hebrew in the Semitic family, together with Aramaic, Amharic and Maltese. Encyclopaedia Britannica's family tree places Hebrew with Aramaic in the Northwest Semitic group, and Arabic with its dialects in its own branch. In practice, that means a shared ancestor, a shared way of building words, and thousands of years of separate development.

Modern Hebrew is the everyday language of millions of people, mainly in Israel, and Hebrew has been the language of Jewish prayer and scholarship for many centuries. Arabic is spoken from Morocco to the Gulf, in many dialects, with Modern Standard Arabic as the shared written language.

Words you can recognise

Here are everyday words that come from the same ancient roots. Read the transliteration aloud and the family resemblance is easy to hear.

The pronouns and the first numbers are just as close:

The Hebrew numbers are the forms Israelis use when simply counting. Arabic also has أحد aḥad for "one", which is even closer to Hebrew eḥad.

The sound shifts that connect them

The words above are not identical because each language changed some sounds over time. Once you know the regular patterns, you can often "convert" a word in your head:

Britannica's overview of Semitic sounds explains where some of these come from. The old th and dh sounds (as in English think and this) were lost in the Canaanite languages, Hebrew's branch, and merged with s-type sounds, while Classical Arabic kept them. Arabic also kept the deep throat sounds of the ancient family more fully than most of its relatives. That is why Arabic has letters such as ث ذ ض ظ غ with no separate Hebrew equivalent.

Hebrew has its own change: the letters for b, k, p soften to v, kh, f after a vowel. That is why the root k-t-b gives Arabic kataba but Hebrew katav, and "dog" is kalb in Arabic but kelev in Hebrew.

How Modern Hebrew sounds compared with Arabic

On paper, Hebrew has letters that match the Arabic throat sounds: ח (ḥet) matches Arabic ح, and ע (ayin) matches Arabic ع. In the standard pronunciation of Modern Hebrew, though, most speakers say ח like the kh of כ, and ע like a simple vowel or a light catch, the same as א. Hebrew ר is usually a throaty r, close to French r, rather than the rolled Arabic ر. And Hebrew has no "heavy" emphatic consonants: ט sounds like ת, and ק like k.

For learners this works in two directions:

• Hebrew speakers learning Arabic need to add sounds: the heavy ص ض ط ظ, the throat sounds ح and ع, and the separate ث and ذ. Our guide to the hardest Arabic sounds shows how to practise them.
• Arabic speakers learning Hebrew mostly need to relax: fewer distinct consonants, plus the sounds p and v, which Arabic does not have.

Grammar: the same building plan

The deepest similarity is not in the words but in how they are built.

Roots and patterns. In both languages most words grow from a root of three consonants, and vowel patterns around the root change the meaning. Britannica's entry on the root and pattern system uses Arabic k-t-b ("writing") as its example. Hebrew has the same root:

Masculine and feminine. Both languages mark the feminine with an -a ending: Arabic كلب kalb / كلبة kalba, Hebrew כלב kelev / כלבה kalba (male dog / female dog). Both also have separate words for "you" when talking to a man or a woman, as the pronoun table shows.

No "is" in the present. Arabic and Hebrew both drop the verb "to be" in simple present sentences, and both put the adjective after the noun:

Notice the article: Arabic ال al- and Hebrew ה ha-. Different sounds, same job, and in both languages "the big house" repeats it on the adjective. The "door of the house" structure (Arabic iḍāfa, Hebrew smikhut) works the same way too. Hebrew can also add -i for "my" just as Arabic does (ביתי beyti), but in everyday speech ha-bayit sheli is far more common.

Pairs. Arabic uses the dual ending for any noun: يومان yawmān (two days). Hebrew kept the dual mainly for time words and body pairs: יומיים yomayim (two days), עיניים eynayim (eyes).

Where they differ. Formal Arabic has case endings (-u, -a, -i) that Hebrew lost long ago. Arabic verbs have more forms and even dual endings ("you two wrote"). Modern Hebrew grammar is simpler in these areas, and its everyday vocabulary includes many words built in modern times or borrowed from European languages, such as קפה kafe (coffee) and טלפון telefon (phone).

The same alphabet order

Both alphabets come from the same ancient letter tradition, and you can still see it in the order. The old Arabic letter order, called abjad after its first four letters, follows the Hebrew order for its first 22 letters:

Arabic then adds the six letters Hebrew does not have: ث خ ذ ض ظ غ. Arabic schoolbooks today use a different order that groups letters by shape (ا ب ت ث…), but the abjad order is still used for numbering lists, much like "a, b, c" in English. Omniglot's history of the Hebrew script traces it back to the early Aramaic alphabet; the Arabic script also descends from an Aramaic-based alphabet, which is why the two families are related but look so different today.

False friends

Shared roots do not always mean shared meanings. A few classic traps:

And some everyday words are simply different: "thank you" is شكرا shukran in Arabic and תודה toda in Hebrew; "good morning" is صباح الخير ṣabāḥ al-khayr and בוקר טוב boker tov.

Words also travelled the other way: everyday Hebrew slang borrowed Arabic words such as יאללה yalla ("come on, let's go", from Arabic يلا) and אהלן ahlan ("hi", from Arabic أهلا).

A short dialogue side by side

Here is a simple exchange in Modern Standard Arabic and in Modern Hebrew. Look for the shared words ism / shem ("name") and wāḥid / eḥad ("one").

In relaxed spoken Hebrew, "what is your name?" is more often איך קוראים לך? eykh korim lekha? ("how do they call you?"), just as Arabic speakers often switch to dialect, for example Levantine شو اسمك؟ shū ismak?

Is Arabic easier if you know Hebrew?

Yes, it gives you a real head start: the root system, the gender endings, the sentence without "is" and hundreds of related roots will feel familiar from the first week. What still takes work is a new alphabet with joined letters, the extra Arabic sounds, the larger verb system, and choosing between Modern Standard Arabic and a dialect. Our guide on which Arabic to learn first helps with that choice, and if you are new to the script, how to learn the Arabic alphabet fast gives you a 7-day plan.

Want a guided path instead of putting the pieces together alone? Our complete Arabic video course starts with the letters and sounds and builds up to your first real sentences, which is exactly where knowing a sister language like Hebrew starts to pay off.