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Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic
Review: This is a grammar-based course that teaches spoken Egyptian Arabic though structured lessons. Each lesson includes a series of spoken drills that reinforce the grammar, and a short spoken conversational dialogue that illustrates the grammar in action.Pros: This is the best comprehensive course on Egyptian Arabic that I was able to find. All vocabulary words, drills, and dialogues are presented in 12 units, and are recorded on 12 audio cassettes. All lessons are romanized (transliterated into our western alphabet) using a system that I found very easy to master. I found that once I learned the system, I could pronounce a word perfectly by reading it, even before hearing it spoken on tape. Cons: The recordings were done back in the 1980s, and they are sorely in need of remastering. Some of the recordings are very muffled and difficult to understand. The excellent system of written transliteration makes this much less of problem than it might have been. There are long lists of vocabulary words to memorize, which can be daunting at times, and the Arabic script is not introduced at all. Overall, this course was well worth my time and money, and I would highly recommend it if you are VERY serious about learning spoken Egyptian Arabic. Although this course cannot measure up to the FSI series (which unfortunately only offers Arabic in the Saudi dialect), this course is the next best thing, and it will provide you with working proficiency in Egyptian Arabic.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic
Review: This is a grammar-based course that teaches spoken Egyptian Arabic though structured lessons. Each lesson includes a series of spoken drills that reinforce the grammar, and a short spoken conversational dialogue that illustrates the grammar in action. Pros: This is the best comprehensive course on Egyptian Arabic that I was able to find. All vocabulary words, drills, and dialogues are presented in 12 units, and are recorded on 12 audio cassettes. All lessons are romanized (transliterated into our western alphabet) using a system that I found very easy to master. I found that once I learned the system, I could pronounce a word perfectly by reading it, even before hearing it spoken on tape. Cons: The recordings were done back in the 1980s, and they are sorely in need of remastering. Some of the recordings are very muffled and difficult to understand. The excellent system of written transliteration makes this much less of problem than it might have been. There are long lists of vocabulary words to memorize, which can be daunting at times, and the Arabic script is not introduced at all. Overall, this course was well worth my time and money, and I would highly recommend it if you are VERY serious about learning spoken Egyptian Arabic. Although this course cannot measure up to the FSI series (which unfortunately only offers Arabic in the Saudi dialect), this course is the next best thing, and it will provide you with working proficiency in Egyptian Arabic.
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