Sahehly Review: Can This AI Tool Fix Your Arabic Grammar Mistakes?

Grammatical errors in Arabic are very common and can significantly affect the quality of Arabic texts and thus the reputation of the writer.

There are well-established grammar checkers for English and German. Arabic, as is so often the case, has been left behind – but there are now some improvements.

sahehly.com, for example, is a new product that is supposed to be good, at least according to its own description.

In this article, we take a look at seven typical grammar mistakes in Arabic that a grammar checker should be able to fix, and we see how Sahehly fared.

Let’s first start with some background information about Sahehly.

So let’s look at common mistakes in Arabic and how Sahehly fixes them.

Seven common Arabic mistakes

Wrong preposition

The following example is a common mistake among beginners of Arabic whose first language is English. In Arabic, far from is بَعِيد عَنْ – so do not use translate the English phrase literally and use مِنْ for from.

Let’s see if Sahehly can detect this mistake.

Example: I am far from the office.

The question of إِنَّ or أَنَّ

This mistake is very common among native speakers of Arabic, even in newspapers. After the verb قَالَ, which means to say in Arabic, you need إِنَّ (with “i”).

Example: He said that the exam was easy.

In case you want to know why we have to use إِنَّ after the verb قالَ, I have discussed that quite intensively in my book Arabic for Nerds 1 and Arabic for Nerds 2.

When to Use إِنَّ (Inna) in Arabic: The 9 Most Important Rules

The Arabic emphatic particle إِنَّ (inna) often gives native speakers a hard time, but it doesn't have to be difficult. This comprehensive guide covers nine important situations for its use, from starting nominal sentences and following quotations to its role in oaths and rhetorical questions.

• Grammar

byGerald Drißner

2 min

1

Agreement

Not marking indefinite (نَكِرة), accusative nouns (مَنْصُوبٌ) correctly, especially adjectives (نَعْتٌ), is a common mistake.

Example: I saw a beautiful horse.

Numbers

Whether you are a native speaker or not, numbers are often misspelled in Arabic. In particular, the rules about when to put the thing being counted (مَعْدُودٌ) in the plural and what grammatical gender the number (عَدَدٌ) must have are often confused.

Example: This document consists of three parts.

How to Write Large Numbers in Arabic: A Detailed Grammatical Breakdown

Writing Arabic numbers involves intricate rules for singular, plural, gender, and case. This article details the construction of a challenging number like 22,222 men, offering a step-by-step grammatical analysis.

• Grammar

byGerald Drißner

2 min

2

The number 8

The number eight has some peculiarities in Arabic, so I’m curious to see how Sahehly deals with it. To be honest, such things should actually be easy for AI tools because there are clear rules. It’s just complicated for us humans because we’ve rarely trained on the rules.

Example: during eight years

• Result: YES! In the above example, we need the masculine form of the number because the counted noun – year – is feminine. The singular form is سَنةٌ. Sahehly correctly spells the number 8 in such a situation. If you don’t know why, take a look at the following article:

The Number 8 in Arabic: Grammar and Spelling

The number 8 in Arabic is tricky! This article breaks down its special grammatical rules, including why the masculine form is unique, how to correctly use 18, and why 800 often sounds the same. Master this challenging area of Arabic numbers.

• Grammar

byGerald Drißner

17 min

1

Engy Ahmed, an author, had brought Sahehyl to my attention and also sent me some examples of the errors Sahehly detects. The following two examples are from Engy.

Jussive mood (مجزوم)

In Arabic grammar, when a verb is in the jussive mood (مَجْزُومٌ) and ends in a weak letter (حَرْفُ عِلَّةٍ), the final weak letter is dropped. This is a common rule that many learners might overlook.

Example: He saw nothing.

Dialect endings in nouns and verbs

The topic of adding a ن to verbs depending on the pronoun is related to the so-called five verbs (إعْرابُ الأَفْعالِ الْخَمْسَةِ). These verbs are in the present tense and have specific endings based on the pronoun used:

1. تَفْعَلَانِ – you [two] do
2. يَفْعَلَانِ – they [two] do
3. تَفْعَلُونَ – you [plural] do
4. يَفْعَلُونَ – they do
5. تَفْعَلِينَ – you [feminine] do

These verbs are marked with a ن in the indicative (مَرْفُوعٌ) and drop the ن in the jussive (مَجْزُومٌ) and subjunctive (مَنْصُوبٌ) moods. Especially native speakers often make mistakes here because they are used to the way it works in their dialect.

Example: They use.

Automatic Tashkeel

Sahehly also has a Tashkeel (تشكيل) option. I’ve tried many tools that say they can correctly add diacritical markers. Most of them get around 80 percent right, but they struggle with tricky parts, like active or passive participles (which can look the same without vowels) and complicated sentence structures where the objects come first.

These errors are the most noticeable. So I strongly recommend that you do not rely on these tools for vocalization, and instead do it by hand. You won’t need them very often anyway, and it’s better to take the time to understand the parts of the sentence to know what you’re reading or writing. However, I believe that with time and better training data (which is not widely available for Arabic), AI tools will eventually improve in this area.

Sahr Dictionary (صخر)

That is one of the best parts of Sahehly. The Sakhr (صخر) dictionary. Older readers might remember that many years ago, for Microsoft Windows, there was a dictionary program called Sakhr. If I am not mistaken, this is the same company (if not, please let me know).

The Online Sakhr Dictionary is a free tool for quickly looking up words. It doesn’t provide examples for word usage, but it’s useful when other dictionaries don’t have what you’re looking for, especially for English to Arabic translations.

For example, I searched for inflation and got the correct result: تَضَخُّم

Conclusion

sahehly.com is a helpful AI tool for improving your Arabic writing by correcting grammar mistakes. It offers features like syntax checks and a dictionary, making your writing clearer and more accurate. While it’s great for many things, you still need to watch out for tricky grammar and vocalization. Overall, Sahehly is a useful advancement in Arabic language processing, assisting both beginners and professionals in enhancing their writing skills.

Note: I only recommend tools that I find useful. I do not get paid for this, nor do I publish paid articles. I try to be as transparent and independent as possible.