Umm al-Dunya Reviews

This three-part course in Modern Standard Arabic for non-native speakers approaches the language through a series of themed topics—daily life in the Arab world, politics and governance, literature and the arts, science and medicine, astronomy—concentrates principally on listening and speaking skills. In each section, vocabulary is built up as various linguistic structures and strategies are introduced and practiced in a clear introduction to Arabic grammar. A CD accompanies Volume 1, and a supplementary dictionary, al-Mu‘jam al-musa‘id, gives a complete key to the vocabulary of all three books in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. Comprehensive and easily digestible, varied and informative, these books make an ideal basis for a classroom-based course in Arabic anywhere in the world.

While most courses in Egyptian Arabic teach the essentials of syntax, morphology, and vocabulary, this second in a series of three books takes the student a step beyond and focuses on colorful expressions used by native speakers. The learner will advance from knowing how to form a good sentence to being able to express his or her thoughts about the ups and downs of daily life using culturally appropriate phrases. Following the first volume which highlighted the many expressions used to describe people, their characteristics, their behaviors, and their attitudes, this second volume focuses on proverbs and their use. Each entry is given fully voweled, and definitions (including connotation) and explanations are given in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. The book also contains a large number of exercises.