A BASIC COURSE IN IRAQI ARABIC (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics)

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding learning resource.
Review: Ten chapters, 77 pages, just on the phonology of the Iraqi dialect! The author is very gifted at explaining in exquisite detail how each consonant, vowel and diphthong is to be produced, and strangely enough he actually made this subject interesting and comprehensible, something no one else has done in my lifetime. No highbrow "linguist only" babble, but all of that detail in a pleasant straight forward style. A CD with 665 Megs of MP3 files covers the entire text. The grammar notes on each new pattern are extensive. All in all, this course seems far superior to others I have bought. No introduction to the Arabic script in this text.