“Arabic” consists of two main registers of the language. Therefore, Listen and Learn includes tutorial units in both registers, namely Modern Standard Arabic (MSA, also known as “Literary Arabic”) as well as four national spoken Arabic dialects.

All native speakers possess spoken competency in their respective dialects – for example Egyptian, Iraqi, Levantine, and Moroccan. These Arabic dialects vary widely from each other in pronunciation and vocabulary. Speaking an Arabic dialect does not mean literacy in Arabic. Egyptian Arabic, for example, is spoken by some 83 million Egyptians of which some 70% are literate in MSA. In contrast , MSA is not anyone's native language yet literacy (the ability to read) in Arabic is measured by knowledge of MSA. Modern Standard Arabic is the literary, inflected for case (like Latin), standard written Arabic throughout the contemporary Arabic-speaking world.