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Summary: A Great Companion to Any Arabic Course
Review: This book should be first on your shopping list when you begin to study Arabic.Most Arabic textbooks are written by native Arabic-speakers, who often don't anticipate the degree of difficulty that English-speakers will have with the Arabic alphabet. Although the Arabic alphabet is not as difficult as written Chinese or Japanese, Arabic script is definitely more difficult to master than the Russian or Greek alphabets. (For my money, Arabic writing is even more difficult for beginners than Korean or Hindi script.) The problem for English-speakers has a number of aspects. First of all, Arabic is written in a cursive form, in which all the letters seem to run together. Second, each Arabic letter can be written in multiple forms, depending on its relationship to other letters. Third, although Arabic script is phonetic, words are often written without vowel markers, so the reader has to sound out the vowel based on his or her grasp of the context. Lastly, the script is the easy part of learning the language; Arabic grammar will seem extremely difficult if you've never learned a non-European tongue. (This is not meant to discourage you from learning Arabic - Arabic is also one of the most fascinating languages on the planet!) "Teach Yourself Beginner's Arabic Script" is especially helpful because it delves into the Arabic writing system as no standard textbook can. The book first explains the forms and pronunciation of each letter in the Arabic alphabet, and then how each letter interacts with other letters. Along the way, you'll pick up a generous portion of grammar and vocabulary; but as the title indicates, the focus of this book is the writing system. If the Arabic writing system is keeping you up late at night and you don't mind spending a few more dollars on supplemental texts, here are a few other books that you should consider in addition to this one: "The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It"(ISBN: 0818404302). This book is older and shorter than the Mace book, but still quite good. "Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds" (ISBN: 087840273X) This book is somewhat unorganized, but it has audio recordings. I can only think of one improvement for "Teach Yourself Beginner's Arabic Script." This book would rate six or seven stars if the publishers had included audio CDs. Nonetheless, this is a very handy and effective volume for the price. Review by Edward Trimnell, author of "Why You Need a Foreign Language and How to Learn One" (2003)
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Summary: Excellent introduction that demystifies Arabic writing
Review: This book's a good introduction to the Arabic script, and is easy for those unfamiliar with the language or alphabet to use to get to grips with it.
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Summary: The best beginner's book - ever!
Review: This is one of the excellent "Teach Yourself" series. I have tried to learn Arabic on my own using various sources and this is by far the best I have come across. Divided into 15 units, John Mace introduces the student to the alphabet in easy stages rather than the whole alphabet at once (which can be a little daunting)and adds a little grammar in each unit. This is very encouraging to the complete beginner and there are lots of exercises and tests at the end of each unit to re-inforce what you have learnt. Each unit stretches the student a little more but if you concentrate and do all the exercises it is more than manageable. However, the best thing about this book is that Mr Mace teaches you how to hand write Arabic. I spent a whole year once writing beatiful Arabic script as I saw it printed, not realising that it wasn't hand written that way. All the vocabulary used in the book is included in a useful Arabic-English and English-Arabic dictionary. I cannot recommend this book too highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Overly detailed view of the Language
Review: When a person learns a foreign script they don't want to be bombared with words they have to absorb. Teach Yourself remembered this when they printed "Teach Yourself: Hindi script". Their is little need to remember words, commiting the letters to memory is enough. This book is different though, it gives one alot to absorb, like 30 words per unit and grammer. If a person plans on making inroads to the language though, they must know the letters by heart before doing anything else. Arabic as an alphabet isn't to hard to remember, but it is quite confusing in spelling, and for a beginner this does not help any when you have words piled on. It should be noted though the Author does make it so one does understand the language better, I am no expert on Arabic, but I do know alot more then I had thought about knowing. Although it tries to teach you signs, it ends up building your vocabulary up to inclue quite a few nouns and very few other words. On the whole though, this book isn't bad though.
Rating:
Summary: Overly detailed view of the Language
Review: When a person learns a foreign script they don't want to be bombared with words they have to absorb. Teach Yourself remembered this when they printed "Teach Yourself: Hindi script". Their is little need to remember words, commiting the letters to memory is enough. This book is different though, it gives one alot to absorb, like 30 words per unit and grammer. If a person plans on making inroads to the language though, they must know the letters by heart before doing anything else. Arabic as an alphabet isn't to hard to remember, but it is quite confusing in spelling, and for a beginner this does not help any when you have words piled on. It should be noted though the Author does make it so one does understand the language better, I am no expert on Arabic, but I do know alot more then I had thought about knowing. Although it tries to teach you signs, it ends up building your vocabulary up to inclue quite a few nouns and very few other words. On the whole though, this book isn't bad though.
Rating:
Summary: Overly detailed view of the Language
Review: When a person learns a foreign script they don't want to be bombared with words they have to absorb. Teach Yourself remembered this when they printed "Teach Yourself: Hindi script". Their is little need to remember words, commiting the letters to memory is enough. This book is different though, it gives one alot to absorb, like 30 words per unit and grammer. If a person plans on making inroads to the language though, they must know the letters by heart before doing anything else. Arabic as an alphabet isn't to hard to remember, but it is quite confusing in spelling, and for a beginner this does not help any when you have words piled on. It should be noted though the Author does make it so one does understand the language better, I am no expert on Arabic, but I do know alot more then I had thought about knowing. Although it tries to teach you signs, it ends up building your vocabulary up to inclue quite a few nouns and very few other words. On the whole though, this book isn't bad though.
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