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Rating: Summary: Errors galore. Useless garbage. Review: I have never seen so many errors in a phrase book, in any language, in any edition. The worst problem is that they give one variant in Latin Transcription and totally different one with the Arabic script so you can't verify one by another.Examples: Page 9. Phrase: "There is not any". Latin transcription: "ma-feesh". Arabic: "la bujd/tujd". Same page, phrase: "Thank you very much". Latin: "'al-fi shukr". Arabic: "shkra' jazila'". Now that's very bad because these expressions are lexically very different and where's adjustment to the gender and the number which is very important in Arabic?! Same page, phrase: "Here you are". Latin: "it-faD-Dal/it-faDDalee". Now that's even worse. How it can be "it-faD-Dal" if the Arabic word starts from consonant, the letter "ta?" Hello! Did they introduce preposition vocalization in Arabic already? That goes on through the whole book, one blunder after another. Adding insult to injury, this book was printed in China which is about as smart as printing a Chinese book in Arabia. This guide is published by Baron's who is known of publishing something about anything with good quality of print but very low quality of content. I wrote them an inquiry about those errors, they never got back to me. If you rely on this book you'd have to use your body language with locals or drawing on the sand because it's very unlikely they will understand what you are saying. You'd have to verify everything with a serious dictionary and a grammar guide to make it sound right. Skip it. It's useless for what it is.
Rating: Summary: An Amazing Book! Review: This is the best Arabic phrase book I have ever seen. It is good for people who have never had any experience with arabic or for people who have. This book is in the Egyptian dialect, which is a good one to know because it is widely understood. But if one already has some knowledge of Arabic there is also the standard form of each word given in the Arabic script, which is also covered. What makes this book so nice is that it is set up so the reader can actually learn the language instead of just memorize key phrases. The subjects covered are extensive and the dictionary is Arabic to English and English to Arabic. No matter what level of achievment is desired, this is the best book to help reach that goal with. This book is not going to give complete knowledge of the language, but it will give as much as a phrase book is able to considering it's size.
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