Hello! I’m trying to learn Syrian Arabic and need some written sources like blogs, websites, e-books. This is important that the sources are from Syrians. Because there are some differences in the other branches of Levantine Arabic like Lebanese, Jordanian or Palestinian. May you recomend me what I can use for reading practise? My other question is that I wouldlike sometimes ChatGPT to write me a text in Syrian dialect. Did you try it? Is artificial intelligence using the dialect correctly? Is it right to trust the language in the writings generated by AI?
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Hi Bushra,
I hope you’re well.
It’s quite tricky getting ahold of written dialect material. One thing I’ve tried is downloading transcripts of your favourite Syrian dialect podcasts, another is using the Defence Language Institute’s catalogue (they have lots of Syrian dialect material), they usually provide a transcript (a real person, not AI, writes that) for each lesson.
These aren’t stories or blogs, but they might be useful. Please feel free to reach out to me if you should so wish.
Kind regards,
Tom
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Hello! Thanks so much for your reply! I will look at the contents of the DLI catalog. Which podcasts do you download transcripts from? I also particularly wonder What do you think about the texts in the Syrian dialect written by ChatGPT? I write the folowing promt to the AI: Please write me a text in Aleppo Arabic. Certainly don’t use any other dialect or modern standard Arabic. There are 4 university students in this text. They are discussing the following topic in a debate club: Children are born innocent or vice versa. In this text, include the daily speech, idioms, pronunciation, and metaphors of Aleppo! I am not saying the Levantine or the Shami dialect here, because, strangely when I say that, I have seen mistakes in the texts written by the AI. The AI generally seems to write correct texts. I want Aİ to write me different scenarios, like two people talking on education, a conversation about dreams, discussing students on different topics etc. I am thinking of going to the Clipchamp website, recording these texts with Syrian Arabic tts Amani and importing them into Lingq. What do you think? Are the texts generated by the AI and voiced by a tts reliable in terms of grammar and vocabulary?
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Hi Bushra,
I’m no expert on AI, but from what I understand platforms like ChatGPT are constantly learning. Therefore, I think the weakness here, is that you’re asking it a particular question, probably one that hasn’t been asked very often on that platform, and therefore, one it hasn’t evolved and learned from very much.
I have asked ChatGPT questions on subjects I know a lot about, in English, and it’s made many basic, factual mistakes.
Another issue is that there’s not one specific Aleppo dialect. Different communities, rural and urban, have different accents. I have a Syrian friend from Rural Aleppo who speaks more like someone from Deir Az Zor or Hassekeh in the far East of Syria than a Shami, western dialect. This is a bit closer to the Iraqi dialect which I know quite well, but to be honest it is sometimes a struggle to understand what he’s saying!
I think my point here is that you shouldn’t expect it to be perfect, and as long as you’re on the lookout for mistakes and are conscious of what might be wrong with it then it could still be a good tool to use. I think using this perhaps as reading practice, while using other tools for listening would be a good tactic.
As for podcasts, I’m not sure about Syria dialect ones as it’s not been a focus of mine, but I’m sure there are quite a few out there. Perhaps you could ask ChatGPT for ideas 
Feel free to DM me and we can chat more.
Kind regards,
Tom
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