Do people speak English in Syria?

The short answer: in places, and unevenly. There is English at a hotel desk and usually none inside the souq, and the distance between the two is two hundred metres. The number of people who speak English as a second language is estimated at under a million, a small share of the population. The country’s language map has its own page here; this page asks one thing — will you be understood.

Who speaks it

English gathers in particular trades and a particular age band. Hotel receptionists, guides, agency staff, pharmacists, university students and some younger shopkeepers speak it. Old-city hotels in Aleppo and Damascus are better still, because talking to foreigners is the job itself.

Age decides a lot. People under thirty grew up with English through the curriculum and the internet; above that, the second language is more often French, or none. Returnees from the diaspora are a separate group, and often the most fluent speakers you meet.

Where there is none

Do not count on English with souq traders, at the bus yard, in a minibus, in a taxi, in the countryside or at a checkpoint. Those are the places where things actually get done, so the most practical moments of the day pass without a shared language.

Checkpoints deserve their own line. Your driver is the one who speaks there, and that is not a matter of manners but of the exchange going properly. Standing quietly gets you through faster than trying out your English.

Why French is still heard

French is a layer left from the Mandate and it has thinned a great deal. French speakers are estimated at fewer than five thousand today, concentrated among the older generation, urban families and Christian communities. Before the war, thousands of pupils were enrolled in French-language Catholic schools, and the trace of those schools is still there.

In practice English is understood more widely than French. If you have French it may help you in a church or with an older trader; it is not a general solution. In the north and along the coast a fair number of people speak Turkish, and that too depends on the region.

Translation apps: a data question first

Translation apps work, but they need data, and data is not the same everywhere in Syria. Connections hold in the cities and drop on intercity roads and in the countryside. So the place where the app is needed most is the place where it works least.

The fix is simple and done before you leave: download the Arabic language pack for offline use. Offline translation handles words and short sentences; it falls apart on long or idiomatic ones.

Camera translation usually reads printed signage. It stalls on calligraphy, carved inscriptions and handwriting — which is precisely the text you want at the door of a building. How the local line is bought, and where coverage weakens, is a separate page on this site.

Writing instead of speaking

Showing a sentence beats saying it more often than not. Holding out a phone screen is unremarkable here, and the person across from you will do the same.

Two things prepared in advance make the day easier. First, the name and address of where you are staying, written in Arabic on your phone — enough on its own in a taxi, at the bus yard and when you are lost. Second, numbers: typing a price into a calculator instead of saying it is the smoothest form of haggling, and both sides use it.

What five words buy

You do not need to learn Arabic. Learning five set phrases does change things, and the change is in posture rather than language: a foreigner who returns a greeting in its local form is met differently, even if the rest of the exchange happens in English.

The phrases that work cluster around greeting, thanks, asking a price and apologising. Their spelling, pronunciation and the moment to use them sit on the phrases page here. The only thing to add is this — five phrases go further than a dictionary.

What it means in practice

• Plan on English at hotels and with guides, and on none in the souq, in taxis and at the bus yard.
• Download the Arabic pack for offline use before you leave; coverage drops outside cities.
• Carry the name and address of your lodging written in Arabic on your phone.
• Do not say the number, type it — a calculator screen says the same thing to both sides.
• Let the driver speak at checkpoints; it is not the moment to try out your English.