Songs and films

1. Open "Songs" — the "Sections" menu in the header.
2. At the top of the page there is a "Song link" field. Paste the link and press "Break down".
3. A YouTube link takes you straight to the video breakdown: player, text, tap-a-word.
4. A link from anywhere else (TikTok, Instagram, Vimeo and so on) — we pull the audio and recognise the words ourselves. It takes about a minute, and the player with the text appears right on that page.
5. Got your own file? Under the field there is an "or" — you can upload audio up to 4 MB.

One honest warning: songs come out worse than plain speech. Music, stretched vowels, echo — expect mistakes. Spoken video is noticeably cleaner.

Right under the form sits a live chart — "What people are playing right now". This is not our own selection: it is the Apple Music charts of Arab countries. Pick a country with the buttons above the list — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon. Where a chart holds almost no Arabic tracks (Morocco and the like) the tab is skipped: a one-line list is not a chart.

We filter out global pop by genre, or the "Saudi top" would be English-language and there would be nothing to learn from it. One artist gets at most two slots, and a country shows up to ten tracks.

Each row carries the number, the cover, the title, the artist and three links: "Find on YouTube" plus two music services (on the international site — Spotify and Apple Music).

There is deliberately no "Analyze" button in the chart: we keep no verified clip links for these songs. The route is: "Find on YouTube" → find the clip → copy the link → paste it into the field at the top of the page and press "Break down".

Under the heading you get the date the chart was built — we refresh it about once a week. A silently stale list is worse than an honest date.

Below the form sits the collection itself. Three rows of filters at the top, and they stack:

1. Dialect — Egyptian, Lebanese, Saudi, Iraqi and more. Egyptian dominates the catalogue: it travels everywhere and it is the easiest place to start.
2. Genre — Pop, Classic, Tarab, Shaabi, Mahraganat and others, spelled the way the catalogue spells them.
3. Difficulty — Easy, Medium, Hard. Start with Easy.

There is a search box too: it looks through titles, artists, genres and the Arabic script.

This is about the cards of our own collection. Rows in the live chart are built differently — number, cover, title, artist and links, with no difficulty badge, no "why take it" line and no "Lyrics" button.

• Artist photo, the title, its translation and the Arabic spelling.
• Badges for dialect and difficulty.
• One line on why this one is worth studying — "clear vocals, good for word-by-word work", that sort of thing.
• "Analyze" — the red button straight into the player. It only shows up where a checked link is already filled in.
• "Find on YouTube" — when a card has no verified link yet: a search opens, find the clip, copy the link into "Analyze video".
• "Where to watch" — on films and series: JustWatch shows which paid services really carry it in your country, next to Shahid and Netflix search.
• Filters (dialect, kind, difficulty) sit behind the "Filters" button next to the search — the page starts with posters, not three rows of chips.
• "Lyrics" — opens a web search for the words. We do not host lyrics ourselves, they belong to someone else.

At the bottom there is "Show more" — the collection loads 24 cards at a time.

The "Top 200 films" page works the same way, except the middle filter is the kind — film, series, cartoon — and cards carry posters, years and directors.

There is no live chart on the films page — it lives on Songs only.

There is no link field on that page. The route is: find it on YouTube with "Find on YouTube", copy the link, paste it into "Analyze video".

And do not take a whole film. Take a trailer, a scene or a single episode — nobody gets through two hours word by word.

Stars start out as our popularity score. Tap a star and it becomes your own rating. Tap the same one again and the rating is cleared.

The heart saves the item to favourites. The "Favorites" button above the list leaves only the saved ones on screen — a neat way to build yourself a playlist for the week.

Both live in your browser. On another device the list will be empty, and clearing your history wipes it too.

At the very bottom of both pages there is "Suggest a title". A link plus a short note, sent to the owner of the catalogue. The collections are filled in by hand, so suggestions do get read.

One song a week. Day one, just listen. After that work through it line by line, not all at once.

Trust the difficulty badge, not your favourite singer. Classic and tarab sound gorgeous, but the language is heavy.

Stay in one country. Jumping between Egyptian and Moroccan before the language settles only confuses you.

The collections are free and need no account — browse and search as much as you like. Only the breakdown is metered: 3 videos a day on the free plan.

The live chart is free and needs no account either. Only the breakdown is metered.