Arabic dialects: what we have tested

Which dialects does the front desk speak?

Gulf (Saudi), Levantine (Jordanian) and Egyptian Arabic are set up and tested: customers write in their own words and get an answer in the same dialect. Sudanese, Yemeni and Iraqi are in testing. For any other Arabic dialect, such as Moroccan, Algerian or Libyan, it answers in clear, simple Arabic and does not slide into the nearest dialect it knows. It also reads and writes Arabizi (Arabic in Latin letters), English and Malay.

Each dialect has its own page, with the real messages and replies from our tests and the latest results. Open the dialect pages

How do you test it?

For each dialect we write about 30 realistic customer messages: booking a table, asking a price, halal and vegetarian questions, a complaint, a toothache, a group of 15, a message full of local slang. We send them to the live assistant, and a second AI judges every reply against three rules: it understood the message, it answered in the customer’s dialect or in clear simple Arabic, and it invented nothing. Our team, who speak these dialects, write and read the messages. The review of the Sudanese, Yemeni and Iraqi set is still in progress.

How did it do?

On the Sudanese, Yemeni and Iraqi set, the latest run passed 68 of 90 messages. In nearly every case it understood the customer and gave the right price, hours, location or booking answer. The misses were almost all about dialect: a reply with a word or two from another dialect, for example a Levantine «بدك» for a Sudanese customer. We started this work at 7 out of 90. We publish the numbers so you can hold us to them.

What about voice notes?

Voice notes are the hardest part. We turn them into text with ElevenLabs’ speech recognition. On clean recordings it is accurate. On noisy, real dialect speech, such as the Yemeni, Algerian and Moroccan TV dialogue in our tests, many words come out wrong. So before the assistant books anything from a voice note, it says back what it understood (“a table for 4 tonight at 8, right?”) and waits for the customer’s yes.

What about Arabizi?

Customers who write Arabic in Latin letters (“salam, 3andkom tawla?”) get an Arabizi answer. It works well for Gulf, Levantine and Egyptian. For Sudanese, Yemeni and Iraqi the replies are understandable but sometimes drift towards Levantine spelling.

Can you test my customers’ dialect?

Yes. Send us 20 messages your customers really send, in their own words. We run them through the assistant and send you every reply, the good and the bad, before you decide anything.