Paper · arXiv 2511.14295
AraLingBench A Human-Annotated Benchmark for Evaluating Arabic Linguistic Capabilities of Large Language Models
Mohammad Zbib, Hasan Abed Al Kader Hammoud, Sina Mukalled, Nadine Rizk, Fatima Karnib, Issam Lakkis, Ammar Mohanna, Bernard Ghanem
AraLingBench evaluates Arabic and bilingual LLMs' linguistic competence using a benchmark with expert-designed questions across grammar, morphology, spelling, reading comprehension, and syntax, revealing gaps between surface proficiency and true comprehension.
Abstract
We present AraLingBench: a fully human annotated benchmark for evaluating the Arabic linguistic competence of large language models (LLMs). The benchmark spans five core categories: grammar, morphology, spelling, reading comprehension, and syntax, through 150 expert-designed multiple choice questions that directly assess structural language understanding. Evaluating 35 Arabic and bilingual LLMs reveals that current models demonstrate strong surface level proficiency but struggle with deeper grammatical and syntactic reasoning. AraLingBench highlights a persistent gap between high scores on knowledge-based benchmarks and true linguistic mastery, showing that many models succeed through memorization or pattern recognition rather than authentic comprehension. By isolating and measuring fundamental linguistic skills, AraLingBench provides a diagnostic framework for developing Arabic LLMs. The full evaluation code is publicly available on GitHub.