Simple Arabic

Elementary readers of this book have complained that its title is a misnomer because its contents are quite advanced. I disagree with them and defend this title. This book succinctly explains a functionally complete set of topics in Arabic grammar in less than two-hundred pages. This book isn’t limited to elementary Arabic; rather, it addresses all levels by using clear examples and crafty explanations. In short, it simplifies a complex grammatical system while carrying enough information to be my first stop for new concepts. This book has earned its title and is a worthy resource for graduating seniors and anyone that wants a handy reference to use in the real world.

Al-Kitaab

Al-Kitaab is the most popular Arabic workbook for colleges and contains complete lesson plans. Hours of audio and video material accompany this book. I feel that the book introduces advanced material too quickly and advances the grammatical concepts too slowly. It’s nice that the entire series builds on itself, but it’s important to break out of the system regularly to see outside perspectives.

Arabic Language Handbook

A good overview of Arabic. It’s written in English and often uses English characters for Arabic words, which may throw some people off. It discusses word structure in a very theoretical manner and, as some have said, is well respected by linguists. It also carries a good explanation of the history of Arabic.

Read Arabic

If you’re looking for more pathetic stories about what it means to have some siblings, live in LA, have a garden, like computers, or hate traffic, this book is a great read. If not, you probably need to read books like this one in order to improve your skill. Teachers argue that reading easy material silently improves reading skills in general. To be fair, this books stories are better than most and even funny sometimes. This book is partitioned into three sections of increasing difficulty. The last section uses mostly primary sources. I can’t handle the last section without a dictionary yet. This book should be cheap but I think it’s become scarce, so maybe it will be hard to track down.

Arabic for Designers, by Boutros Mourad

Many topics about Arabic are only published in Arabic, making them inaccessible to new students. Mourad spends some time going over the history and styles of the Arabic script before discussing typographical design principles, then provides ample photographs and illustrations of the best and worst instances of Arabic typography. This book is quite handsome.

Arabic calligraphy : Naskh Style for Beginners

This book is very short and isn’t much more than a writing manual for Naskh, the first script Arabic students encounter, but it’s easy to read and provides nuanced details that are easy to forget. Of particular value are the instructions for how to make a reed pen out of bamboo using only a scalpel. This author observes that readers often cite printed Naskh as the archetype of Naskh over the form of its handwritten mother. The handwritten version isn’t nearly as rigid as the digital version; its beauty explains why the Quran is often printed in Naskh handwriting rather than Naskh font. Consider the Ruq’a book for a more thorough exploration of an Arabic script.

Writing Arabic: A Practical Introduction to Ruq’ah Script T.F. Mitchell (1950s)

In the introduction to this book, Mitchell recounts how difficult it was in the 50s to publish Arabic text. Mourad addresses this challenge too while citing the development of typeprint at Al-Hayat, one of the most well-known Arab newspapers. To make this book, Mitchell had to use a typewriter to compose the English components before hand-writing the Arabic elements and illustrations before sending them to be photographed and published by the Cambridge University Press in the 1950s. While this book would benefit from some modern luxuries like a table of contents, an index, or cleaner footnotes, it is fitting that a book about handwriting was produced in the laborious process upon which it instructs. In a way, the Ruq’ah Script is to Arabic script as cursive is to English handwriting, which may seem paradoxical because to users of the Roman alphabet, all Arabic seems cursive. To clarify, Ruq’ah is the everyday script of Arabic because it’s easy to write and feels organic and natural. This book is responsible for the miserable state of my handwriting presently; I’m having trouble remembering how to write in Ruq’ah and how to write in Naskh, and apparently I’ve resurrected some forms (like kaaf followed by another kaaf, laam, or alif) that have almost fallen out of common circulation, but I think it will be worth to be able to read and write in multiple scripts. Check out Mourad’s book (or just google around) to see examples of different scripts.

Media Arabic

Linguists say that Media groups speak their own dialects of their mother languages, which might explain why reading and listening to Arabic media is both difficult and not the best way to develop everyday listening skills. Media Arabic focuses on printed media Arabic by a series of organized readings. It explains some vocabulary, but they leave so much out that this book was probably intended for beginning-intermediate students or lower level students with the resolve to do some extra work. Mastering Media Arabic opens up new primary sources to students.

Basic Arabic and Intermediate Arabic, by John Mace

These two books aren’t very prestigious or well known but they carry some advantages. They introduce a ton of vocabulary and organize it by topic, which is very useful. From the first chapters of the first book Mace introduces grammatical concepts in a complete and advanced manner, something that the authors of the Al-Kitaab series fail to do.

Standard Arabic: An Elementary-Intermediate Course

This book, by Schulz, is based on its counterpart published in German. Matt S., from class, has heard complaints that this book is pretty dry and tough to read. He’s right, I think, but I didn’t find it that bad because I didn’t start reading this book until after I’d finished Al-Kitaab 1 and started doing a lot of outside reading. I really respect how much vocabulary thi book includes and I think that the reading exercises are practical and enjoyable (the engineer in me must be speaking). The exercises are pretty dull if you’ve already encountered a lot of vocabulary, but the coverage of grammar in unmatched. Did you know that body parts that come in pairs are usually feminine words but that most body parts that come alone are usually masculine? Schulz does, and he lets you know in chapter two. He also provides the Arabic words for all of the grammatical concepts which will help when you need to talk about them abroad or in later study.

http://jacpot.us/frshr/Arabic/Cambridge/BeginningIntermediate/

Standard Arabic: An Advanced Course

This book was co-written by Dickins, who has taught at Cambridge and in Germany, and by Janet Watson, who has also taught at Cambridge and wrote a textbook on Sanaa’i Arabic as well. This book is the second book in the Cambridge Arabic series and looks pretty tough. It was designed to take two years to complete and offers tons of text and audio. I think that this material is more interesting than that which I encountered in my brief readings of the second two Al-Kitaab books. Like the previous book, An Advanced Course only has audio on tape, which is a real bummer. I ripped a copy to MP3, however. Let me know if you want to listen to it.

Formal Spoken Arabic, by Karin Ryding

This book brings readers to the ambiguous world of pan-Arab spoken Arabic, a dialect that doesn’t really exist but does kinda sorta in circles of educated Arabs. It’s a good book and it explains how to speak a bit more naturally than you might after reading other grammar books. It’s readings are very interesting, if basic, and its listening exercises are straightforward and genuine. Often it uses the Levantine dialect as a reference for Arabic dialects. This decade, Georgetown University Press released an updated edition, which includes the most interesting and natural Arabic computer font I’ve come across. They also had the decency to transfer the cassette tape listening exercises to MP3 on CD, unlike the Luddites at the Cambridge University Press.

Using Arabic, Alosh

Using Arabic carries a wealth of idiomatic standard Arabic and takes a very practical approach. I haven’t seen anything else like this. It balances its wandering content with careful planning and a lot of material.

Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary

It’s the best.

Oxford English-Arabic Dictionary

It’s the best, but it’s not all that great.

dictionary.sakhr.com

Best Arabic-English dictionary online. It’s easy to use, but it helps to understand the root system before you use this. It’s also a de facto Arabic thesaurus. It’s not that rigorous, but it’s good.

nicetranslator.com

Using the Google API and database, the coders at nicetranslator have created the easiest translation tool on the internet, and not just for Arabic. Results appear in real-time without requiring a submit button. You can also translate into multiple languages at once. This isn’t useful for translating an entire page because the format isn’t set up for a lot of text, which is just as well because machine translation is a rather dicey art, even for Google.

linguastep.com

This platform is the best way to learn and maintain vocabulary. I have several ideas and complaints, but the service is worth its price.

The teaching of Arabic as a Foreign Language : Issues and Directions

Understanding the pedagogy and philosophy of the study of Arabic is important when you plan your course of study. Give books like this one a chance.

Feel free to comment about other resources you have used.