I've been living in Jordan for a little over four months, and I'm pleased to say that I seem to have converted what Syrian/Lebanese colloquial Arabic I learnt in the past into the Jordanian dialect.

Along the way, I've used various resources and watched various materials that have really helped. This blog post will be my review of what is available for the student of the Jordanian dialect.

Lots of people say that you can just choose 'Levantine' and that's enough. "You don't need to specialise any further than that," I've heard on a number of occasions. My experience is that the country-level distinctions between Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese Arabic actually do matter, particularly once you get past the pure basics and want to have more natural conversations.

For various reasons, Jordanian dialect resources are under-represented in the market for books and audio resources. They're either subsumed under the 'Levantine' bracket or books generally tend to offer Syrian or Lebanese flavours. It is for this reason that I think it's worth taking stock and gathering together all the resources available for students hoping to travel to Jordan or make a study of the specific dialect spoken here.

Being the last somewhat-calm country in the non-Gulf non-north-African Arab-speaking world, it's a preferred destination for year-abroad students mid-university. If that's you, I think you'll find this post really useful.

How to Use These Resources

There are a lot of books and resources listed below. The expectation is not that you'll go through them all, but that you should rather be aware of what is out there. There aren't really many options for textbooks, so you're basically stuck with Hakini Arabi. (Good thing it's a well-designed course, with lots of dialogue and practice). I'd recommend the serious student of Jordanian Arabic get hold of both Tiedemann's 101 Verbs book and Diwan Baladna. Both are filled with material you'll find nowhere else. (See below for details on these books).