Media Arabic Reviews

Based on the cumulative experience of three leading teachers of Arabic as a foreign language, Kalaam Gamiil builds and develops communicative skills in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, along parallel tracks of vocabulary and grammar. It is designed for students who have reached the lower intermediate level of Modern Standard Arabic and are now ready to branch out into their first experience of a major spoken dialect. Structured around basic topics that crop up in daily conversations, lessons each include a situation, a vocabulary list, preparatory sentences using the new vocabulary items, explanations of grammar in English, cultural information, and a variety of mechanical drills and communicative exercises. The book, volume one of a two-part series, focuses on the speaking and listening skills that will enable intermediate students to handle a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks with native speakers of Egyptian Arabic successfully. Click here to listen to the associated Kalaam Gamiil tracks (Lessons 1 to 12) on Soundcloud.

Whether you are newly arrived in Egypt and need to know the words for ‘bread’ and ‘apartment,’ or a long-term resident who suddenly needs to know how to ask for a picture frame or complain of a sore throat, this dictionary is for you. Fully revised and expanded, the third edition of this unique and invaluable dictionary presents 6,500 words commonly needed by foreigners speaking Arabic in Egypt. Arabic words are written in a clear and consistent transcription system, plurals are given for all nouns, plurals and feminine forms are provided for all adjectives, and past tenses are given for all verbs. The dictionary also provides stress rules and basic charts of verb endings, negation of verbs, form and use of numbers, pronominal suffixes, and comparatives and superlatives.