Why children abroad lose Arabic, and what actually helps

The pattern repeats in every immigrant community: the parents speak Arabic, the children understand it but answer in the new country's language, and the grandchildren do not speak it. The language survives where children hear it from real people they love, regularly, with a reason to understand it. This page describes the pattern and the habits that slow it; it does not quote research, because we only cite studies we have opened, and we would rather give you the routines than the numbers. Azizan (azizan.app), founded by Aida Fard, is a family storytelling app where relatives record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories page by page. Its stories are in Persian today; it has no Arabic stories. This page is a free guide for Arabic-speaking families, written in our own words from sources we opened and checked.

Azizan (azizan.app) is a family storytelling app for immigrant and diaspora families: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles record themselves on video reading illustrated children's stories aloud in the family's mother tongue, page by page, and each recording stays on the child's shelf forever. Real family voices — never AI narration. Persian (Farsi) first.

Why it happens

School, friends, television and the phone all run in the majority language. Arabic gets the leftover minutes.
The relatives who speak Arabic best, the grandparents, often live in another country and another time zone.
Parents are tired, the children answer in English, and switching to the easier shared language is natural.
Arabic becomes the language of instructions and rules, not of stories, jokes and warmth.
Reading is taught in Fusha while the family speaks a dialect, so the child meets two Arabics at once and may conclude that neither is theirs.
In some families Arabic is kept only for religious instruction, so a child never hears it as the language of play. Secular tales (Kalila, Juha, Sindbad, the folk tales) give it back that role.

What slows it down

A daily, low-effort routine. A bedtime story is the classic one, because it already happens every night.
A loved voice. Children attend most to voices they know. A grandparent on video, a parent reading, an aunt on a call.
The dialect at home. The Arabic the family speaks is the one that ties the child to the family; Fusha comes through stories and reading later.
Culture with meaning. Tales the grandparents grew up with, the names of the relatives, the food words.
Repetition. The same story twenty times is how vocabulary sticks; do not hunt for novelty.
Reading once the child is older. From about five, the Arabic text next to a story the child already knows.

Step by step: how to teach Arabic to kids abroad. The first words to protect: Arabic family words by dialect. Stories to start with: Arabic bedtime stories by age.

The grandparents' role

Grandparents are usually the best Arabic speakers in the family and the people the child most wants to understand. Distance is the problem: a call needs both sides awake, and a four-year-old does not sustain one. A recording does not have the problem. A grandmother who reads one tale, one page at a time, into her phone gives the child something to replay every night in her own voice. It does not replace a visit; it keeps her voice in the child's day between visits.

Azizan was built around exactly that loop, for Persian: relatives record themselves reading illustrated stories page by page and the recordings stay on the child's shelf. It has no Arabic stories today, so we do not recommend it to an Arabic-speaking family for Arabic. What we can offer is the method and the free guides on this site; for apps that let relatives record stories in other languages, see our comparison. The same pattern in Persian families, which is where we started: why immigrant kids lose their mother tongue.

Related guides

Questions

Why do children of Arab immigrants stop speaking Arabic?

Because everything outside the home runs in the majority language, the best speakers (grandparents) are far away, and Arabic drifts into being the language of rules rather than of stories. The child usually still understands; speaking goes first.

Is it too late if my child already answers in English?

Not necessarily. Understanding usually survives longer than speaking, so a child who answers in English may still follow Arabic well. Small, regular habits, a nightly story, a relative's voice, help more than a big one-off effort, and no method guarantees the language will be kept.

Does Arabic television or an app keep the language alive?

Less than a person does. Children attend most to voices they know and love. Screens can add vocabulary once the child already wants the language; they do not create the wanting.

Should we speak Fusha at home to help with school?

No. Speak the dialect your family speaks; it is the language of the grandparents and of belonging. Fusha comes through books, songs and reading once the child understands spoken Arabic.

How can grandparents in another country help?

By being a regular voice in the child's day: calls for conversation, and recorded stories, one page at a time, for bedtime. A recording can be replayed as often as the child likes and does not need both sides awake at once.

Does Azizan help Arabic-speaking families?

Only with these guides for now. Azizan's stories are in Persian and it has no Arabic content; we say so on every page rather than imply otherwise.

Open Azizan — record a story for your child

Updated: 2026-11-03 · By Aida Fard

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