Iraqi Arabic lessons made for kids
Gool gives children a playful way to practice the spoken Iraqi Arabic used in everyday family life. Activities adapt to your child's age, progress follows each child, and the first unit is free.
Help keep the family language active
In a lot of Iraqi households abroad the same thing happens: the grown-ups speak Iraqi to the children, and the children answer in English. They understand plenty. Saying it out loud is the part that slips away, because outside the house there is almost nowhere to use it.
Gool is built for that gap. It is a small, regular place for a child to hear everyday Iraqi words and try saying them, so the language stays something they use rather than only something they hear. It will not do the work a family does — but it gives a child something to practice with between visits, calls and family dinners.
Spoken Iraqi for everyday family life
Many mainstream Arabic courses teach Modern Standard Arabic — the shared written and formal language of news, books and classrooms. That is genuinely useful, and Gool is not a replacement for it.
Gool teaches something different: the spoken Iraqi register a family uses at home. Words like shlonak (how are you), khosh (good, nice) and yalla (come on, let's go) are the kind of thing a child hears from a grandparent but will not find in a standard Arabic course.
Words are written in romanized spelling first, so a child who cannot read Arabic script yet is never blocked. The Arabic script sits behind a switch a parent can turn on, and all 28 letters appear as their own stops along the learning path.
Being straight about the content
Gool's Iraqi wording and romanization are still being reviewed by native speakers, and some of it is marked as draft. We would rather say that here than claim a level of verification the app does not yet have.
One path, three age experiences
Every child follows the same curriculum. What changes is how a lesson is presented, chosen by the age band a parent picks for that child's profile.
Ages 3–6
Listening first. A child hears the word, then taps the picture that matches it, then gets a turn to say it out loud and hear themselves back. Wrong taps cost nothing — the lesson simply carries on.
Ages 7–12
Adds recall: as well as tapping the picture, a child chooses the Iraqi word for an English prompt. Hearts make a lesson matter — run out and it starts again, which is meant to be a nudge rather than a punishment.
Ages 12+
The same recall step without picture hints, so the word has to come from memory. Arabic script is shown alongside the romanized spelling by default at this age.
One family, several kids
A parent account can hold a profile for each child, each with its own age band, avatar and progress. Switching between them takes a tap from the parent dashboard.
Short practice with progress that carries forward
Lessons are deliberately small — a handful of words, a few minutes. Finishing one earns XP, and practicing on a new day extends a day streak. Both exist for the same reason: coming back tomorrow matters more than a long session today.
Gool also keeps a spaced review schedule per child. A word answered correctly comes back after a day, then a few days, then a longer gap; a word that was missed comes back quickly. The Practice screen pulls whatever is due, so the words fading fastest are the ones a child sees again.
Built for children, controlled by parents
Gool has no ads, no chat, no comments and no way for users to contact each other. There is nothing for a stranger to reach a child through, because none of that exists in the app.
- A parent creates the account. Child profiles are created and managed from it.
- Settings — Arabic script, sound — and anything to do with paying live in the parent area, not on a child's screens.
- A child profile holds a first name or nickname, an age band, an avatar and progress. No birth date, no photo, no location, no contact details.
- Speaking practice records a short clip on the device to play back. Those practice clips are not uploaded or stored on Gool's servers.
The full detail is in the Privacy Policy, and How Gool works walks through what a parent sets up.
What it costs
The first unit is free and needs no payment details. After that, Gool Plus unlocks the rest of the path for every child on the account — $4.99 a month, $24.99 a year, or $49.99 once. See the full pricing.
More Iraqi Arabic for families
The Gool blog explains Iraqi words for parents who want to use them at home:
- Your Child Understands Iraqi Arabic but Replies in English: A Gentle Home Plan — Why children may understand Iraqi Arabic yet reply in English, plus a gentle five-day family routine for creating small speaking opportunities.
- Shaku maku? How to teach kids Iraqi Arabic greetings and heritage — Start with shaku maku, shlonak and hala yaba — spoken Iraqi greetings that help kids talk to family, plus how to make the dialect stick at home.
- Welcome to the Gool blog — why an Iraqi baba built an app for his kids — Gool teaches kids the spoken Iraqi Arabic families actually use at home. Here's why we built it, and what this blog will be.
Try the first unit
Gool runs in any modern browser — no app store, no download — and can be added to a phone's home screen. The first unit is free, so you can see how your child takes to it before deciding anything.
Start the first unit freeCurious who builds it? About Gool.