Barron's Travelwise Arabic

Rating:
Summary: Very high-quality paperback and phrasebook
Review: In addition to the phrasebook, and although it's reflected in a higher price, this book has very high-quality production values and materials for a contemporary paperback book. Paper is nice, high-quality gossy, and pages are sewed in signatures as well as glued into the binding, for years of use. Chapters are color-coded with icons on the page edges. Roman phoneticization of Arabic words is set in blue type. Tables use color, and illustrations are in color. The cover looks like durable, woven canvas with a waterproof, plasticized coat.

The words and phrases show short-vowel markings, normally not indicated in adult books, which will help with the learning of the words, and making this book a good general vocabulary building book for the non-expert in the language. In addition to the phrasebook, there is a guide to the alphabet and pronunciation, a brief grammar section covering some crucial points of the grammar, and a reference section containing tables of weights and measures, expressions of time, days and months, and so on. At the end is a considerable 80-page English-to-Arabic only dictionary that contains about 2300 words. The front and back covers have a map of the Arabic world. Almost no expense appears to have been spared (literally) to make this a quality product.

The phrasebook section is organized in typical fashion with chapters devoted to various useful situations and topics, such as Eating and Drinking, Events/Entertainment, Clothing, Beach/Sports. There is even an "At the Police Station," and "At the Dentist" section, which, hopefully, you will never need! And there is a section with frequently used phrases. I couldn't find a figure for how many phrases are contained in the book, but as I said, there are about 2300 words in the dictionary, providing a fairly substantial vocabulary. This is a very high-quality paperback, which, although that's reflected in the price of 13 bucks, which is anywhere from 50% to 100% more than the comparable Berlitz, Lonely Planet, and Passport series phrasebooks, I think is still reasonable considering the features and the quality you're getting.