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How good is the Arabic grammar checker Sahehly?

Sahehly, an Arabic AI tool from Sakhr, helps improve writing by fixing grammar mistakes, suggesting synonyms, and providing tashkeel. Our test showed it to be quite promising.

Last updated: 5 days

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.

Sahehly is a language application by Sakhr. The company Sakhr was founded by Mohammed Al-Sharekh (محمد عبدالرحمن الشارخ), a Kuwaiti businessman known for pioneering Arabic computing and translating significant software like the Holy Quran. Mohammed al-Sharekh also created the Archive AlSharekh, a collection of Arab magazines and an Arabic lexicon (Sakhr). He passed away in 2024 (aged 82).

The Sahehly team is made up of specialists in natural language programming, machine learning, , and linguists focused on Arabic language sciences.

  • Correcting common mistakes: Sahehly is more effective at identifying and correcting common Arabic language errors.
  • Providing Synonyms: It offers synonyms to improve clarity in writing.
  • Tashkeel (Diacritization): Sahehly offers four types of diacritization: Mandatory, Case-Ending, Partial, and Full Tashkeel.
  • Dictionary Sakhr to quickly look up words.

I asked the company about their training data. As usual with companies and their PR people, the answers were vague.

  • Syntax-Based Checking: This approach involves a comprehensive morphological and syntactic analysis using an extensive lexical database and parsers.
  • Statistics-Based Examination: Utilizing a vast corpus of texts, Sahehly develops statistical models to extract linguistic insights, enhancing text analysis accuracy.
  • Rule-Based Approach: By analyzing texts against a detailed set of manually developed rules, this approach used error prediction techniques to detect and correct errors accurately.

Go to their website https://sahehly.com

There is a free plan which includes 1,500 characters daily. As per 2024, you can get a subscription for $11.99 per month or $47.99 per year.

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.

incorrectأنا بعيد من المكتب
correctأَنَا بَعِيدٌ عَنْ اَلْمَكْتَبِ
  • Result: NO! Sahehly only gave me a suggestion for a synonym, but did not find the mistake.
Screenshot Sahehly: The AI did not detect the wrong preposition
Screenshot Sahehly: The AI did not detect the wrong preposition

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.

incorrectقال أن الامتحان كان سهلا
correctقَالَ إِنَّ اَلِامْتِحَانَ كَانَ سَهْلًا
  • Result: YES! Sahehly corrected the mistake and changed it to إِنَّ.
Screenshot Sahehly: The AI corrected the mistake and changed أن to َّإِن
Screenshot Sahehly: The AI corrected the mistake and changed أن to َّإِن

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.

Agreement

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

Example: I saw a beautiful horse.

incorrectرأيت حصانًا جميل
correct
رَأَيْتُ حِصَانًا جَمِيلًا
  • Result: YES! Sahehly corrected the mistake and changed it to جَمِيلًا.

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 the number (عَدَدٌ) must have are often confused.

Example: This document consists of three parts.

incorrectتتكون هذه الوثيقة من ثلاث أقسام
correctتَتَكَوَّنَ هَذِهِ اَلْوَثِيقَةِ مِنْ ثَلَاثَةِ أَقْسَامٍ
  • Result: YES! Sahehly corrected the mistake and changed it to ثَلَاثَةِ. Why? Because the singular of أَقْسام is قِسْم which is masculine (مُذَكَّر). According to the rules for numbers from 3 to 10, you need the opposite gender for the number – in our example, the feminine form (مُؤَنَّث).

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

incorrectطِوالَ ثمان سنة
correctطَوَالَ ثَمَانِي سَنَوَاتٍ
  • 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:

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.

incorrectلم يرى شيئًا
correctلم ير شيئًا
  • Result: YES! Sahehly detects the spelling mistake and deletes the weak letter ي in the jussive mood.

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.

incorrectهم يستخدموا
correctهُمْ يَسْتَخْدِمُونَ
  • Result: YES! Sahehly corrects the mistake and suggests the correct verb form. Only in the jussive () and subjunctive (منصوب), the letter ن is removed.

Automatic Tashkeel

Sahehly also has a Tashkeel () 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

Sakhr dictionary - entry for inflation
Sakhr dictionary – entry for inflation

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.

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Paul Ammann
18 days ago

This tool is super – it helps me a lot. Thanks a lot for introducing me to this tool!!

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