Rating: 
Summary: Great guide to the Arabic alphabet
Review: I bought this book so that I could learn the Arabic alphabet, and eventually learn a little Arabic. I thought learning the Arabic alphabet would be very difficult since it nearly looks like the random scribbles of my four year old daughter. I was amazed at how quickly this book allowed me to transform those scribbles into their corresponding letters and sounds. I read the entire book in one night, and now have a basic understanding of the Arabic alphabet. With a little more practice, I'll be ready to start learning words and grammar.
Rating:
Summary: For those wanting to begin learning Arabic
Review: I bought this book, in addition to "Beginner's Arabic Script" from Amazon.com for a friend who had absolutely no Arabic knowledge before we met, and as far as I know, it was a good beginning for her, simple and well explained book. I therefore recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for all levels.
Review: I found this book to be exactly what I needed to get a leg up in learning the basics of reading and writing Arabic. The author is clear to point out what is really important and the material is clear and really clear to comprehend.
Rating:
Summary: Welp, we've got to start somewhere!!
Review: I have been reading and re-reading this little booklet for several weeks, and it's quite helpful... There's something embarrassing about purchasing a "book" on such a basic topic. Therefore, I recommend thinking of this as a "booklet," which it really is, anyway, at under 100 pages.The layout is as follows. First, there's a handy little "Introduction to Arabic," which warns the reader about such curious features of the language as a lack of clear distinction between nouns and adjectives. Arabic, evidently, has many such linguistic features, which are somewhat off-putting to a Western reader. I have been lucky enough to have taken a couple of linguistics courses, which made this brief chapter a little easier for me to get through. However, there's almost no linguistics terminology, and the chapter, on the whole, should be perfectly accessible to anyone. The next chapter is a sixteen page overview of the alphabet, giving the reader useful tips about how to pronounce, and memorize, the various letters. This chapter only gives the "initial" and "isolated" forms of each letter -- most Arabic letters change their appearance if they are in the middle of a word, or at it's end. The third chapter goes into more depth, and shows the "medial" and "final" forms of each letter. At the end there are some recommendations for further study; a verse from the Qu'ran for you to wrestle with; some notes about handwriting; a quick table of the alphabet for ready reference (bookmark this)!; and a map of the Arabic speaking world, with all the countries labelled in Arabic. I like this booklet. It's inexpensive, and I think it's a good way to make the Arabic script less exotic and intimidating. If you decide to continue beyond this, let me just mention that I've asked around at several of Boston's numerous universities, and many of them seem to use the book "Elementary Modern Standard Arabic," by Peter Abboud and Ernest McCarus, published by Cambridge University Press. I am not going to pass myself off as an expert, however -- do some comparison shopping on your own, and see what you think. All in all, this is a very nice idea for a booklet. Two thumbs up.
Rating:
Summary: Taking away the mystery
Review: I have learned some other semitic languages and was always interested in learning Arabic. I considered the alphabet/script to be too big a stumbling block. This book is simply very well done - elegantly laid out and intelligently arranged. It made it very easy for me to learn the alphabet as a gateway to learning Arabic. It is much better to get a book like this and learn the alphabet before actually trying to learn the language than to jump into a teach yourself book. I recommend it for everyone who wants to learn Arabic - master the alphabet first!
Rating:
Summary: Taking away the mystery
Review: I have learned some other semitic languages and was always interested in learning Arabic. I considered the alphabet/script to be too big a stumbling block. This book is simply very well done - elegantly laid out and intelligently arranged. It made it very easy for me to learn the alphabet as a gateway to learning Arabic. It is much better to get a book like this and learn the alphabet before actually trying to learn the language than to jump into a teach yourself book. I recommend it for everyone who wants to learn Arabic - master the alphabet first!
Rating: 
Summary: Very useful in any context.
Review: I have long been interested in Arabic, but the alphabet was very difficult to learn. I found this book much more useful and readable than the short sections about the alphabet that are presented in most other Arabic language books. At times the grammar section of the book is difficult to find, but everything concerning the alphabet itself is very concise and easy to understand. As usual, Awde has presented an excellent reference for novice and expert alike. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Essential teaching aid
Review: I knew Nicholas Awde's name from a previous book on teaching yourself Arabic, and his dictionary of the Chechen language, one of the Caucasian family languages of Georgia and southern Russia, both of which I liked also. I've looked at a couple of dozen Arabic books for the best introduction to the alphabet, and this was the best one, and I saw only one other book that was exclusively an introduction to the Arabic script. In this book Awde has produced along with co-author Samano another excellent language book. Anyone intending to learn a new language like Arabic must first clear the hurdle of learning a new alphabet, and I think anyone using any of the recent books to teach themselves Arabic should probably get this book, too, as their discussions aren't nearly as clear or as detailed as what you'll find here. I'd previously learned the Cyrillic alphabet to learn Russian, so I'm no stranger to foreign alphabets, but Arabic is even more difficult in that at least many of the letters in Russian are the same as in English, although some are different, and some are the same but have a different sound, which is confusing initially. For example, the Russian letter "P" is prounounced like "r," the backwards letter "N" is actually an "i," the "y" is pronounced like "u," and the backwards letter R is is prounounced like "ya"). But Arabic is completely different so there's' no resemblance, so you have to learn everything from scratch. So far I've checked out at least a half dozen books on teaching yourself Arabic, trying to figure out which one I'll buy after reading this book, and although each one has an introductory chapter on the alphabet and script, this book goes into considerably more detail than they can in one chapter and discusses many more concepts and details. The book is almost 100 pages long, and this is much longer than what your typical Arabic language text has space for in the section on the alphabet or script. For example, one of the main difficulties of Arabic is that the letters change their form depending on whether they're at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. The authors go over this in detail as well as other difficulties, such as the hamzah, or diacritical marks that can appear over various consonants. The hamzah has the most complicated rules of any aspect of the Arabic script, and most native Arabic speakers don't even know all of them because there are so many. In that sense it's like the English apostrophe, which can float around a sentence like the Hamzah, and which confuses both English language speakers as well as students of English. In addition to the above, the authors discuss many more difficulties and concepts which will aid you in learning Arabic, whichever text you're working from. Overall, this is almost an essential supplement to any other Arabic book, especially for anyone trying to learn Arabic through self-study.
Rating:
Summary: The Arabic alphabet is all a clear system (like ours)...
Review: I ordered this book just because I was interested in being able to read the Arabic alphabet (as we are seeing more and more of it lately on news reports, etc). This book has been great! It explains everything clearly and concisely, and I can look at it for 15 minutes or so every day and still really learn something! The Arabic alphabet is really not difficult to read and write!
Also, this book proves insightful into the composition of the Arabic language (and why it is so difficult for Americans to Anglicize Arabic words and names) This book would not be good to actually learn the Arabic language from, but it has certainly sparked my interest in this language that most in America do not understand!
Rating:
Summary: the BEST!
Review: I purchased this book 12 years ago, and have used it in courses ever since. I was able to teach myself how to read and write Arabic in less than 6 weeks. I highly recommend this book to anybody who has an interest in learning this fascinating language. The book well-organized, easy to read and understand and there is space to practice writing the Arabic script in all forms: initial, medial, final. It even includes the 12 most common ligatures, a topic frequently overlooked by such texts. Finally, it includes just enough vocabulary to whet your appetite to learn more.
|
