Best Arabic Language Books and Methods
I've been buying books to learn Arabic for about twenty years. Everyone on my dad's side of the family knew Arabic (they'd grown up in Egypt), so I was motivated, but the books I bought turned me off again and again. And again. There were several reasons for this. First, they were all so appallingly uninviting. For some reason, they all seemed like low-budget jobs either designed for phD students (grammar feast) or drunk travellers (spelling mistakes on every page). Perhaps that's because there wasn't a market for a well-produced Arabic method. The second turn off was that most methods taught Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), a formal language designed to let Arabic speakers understand one another from Marrakech to Dubai. The problem is that it's the language of newspapers and television, no one really speaks it. If you want to bypass MSA and learn "street Arabic", you are told that you'll have to choose between the colloquial languages of Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and so on, and that you won't be understood if you travel to another Arab country.
I believed it. The good news is that it's not really true and that what is true about it doesn't matter. It's true that Egyptians may not be able to understand everything when Moroccans speak among themselves, but if everyone tries, there will be communication. And that's all I care about. I want the skills to communicate a little bit in Arabic when I visit Arab countries or when I buy an apple from a Lebanese grocery store in Paris, San Francisco or Sydney.
Many Arabs tend to put down their own colloquial language, and that's probably because they had a hard time with Classical Arabic at school. Don't pay attention to that! It's a bit as though an Italian told you "don't bother studying Italian, it's only our bastardized version of the real language, which is Latin, but it's very very hard, probably too hard, you know?". That wouldn't happen in Italy but it happens all the time in the Arab world, perhaps because Classical Arabic is also Koranic Arabic, the language of Islam's holy book. In my experience, it doesn't matter what Arabic you speak, if you're a non-Arab and you speak more than five words in an Arab country the skies will part for you, time and time again. Most Arabs absolutely love it. You're a non-Arab and you have taken the time to study a bit of their language. It's a sign that you respect them.
I used to save my efforts for a time when I'd have a chance to study Egyptian colloquial Arabic, because it is said that everyone in the Arab world understands the Egyptians (the reverse isn't true). That's because Egypt is the L.A. of the Arab world, everyone listens to its songs and watches its movies and TV programs. Now I say learn everything you can, wherever you are. That will make a good base. Then you can decide to go deeper if you like.
I tried to learn with a Lebanese friend in the States, and I tried to learn with friends in Morocco, but I found that for my style of learning, I really needed a book. My luck with books started with Lonely Planet's Egyptian Arabic Phrasebook. Before that, it was a long dark tunnel lined with useless language methods. I went to the American University's bookshop in Cairo and looked at all the books in the Arabic language section. The tiny Lonely Planet guide was the only one that fit my need of the time. The "proper" language methods looked awfully academic, and the other travel Arabic guides were littered with the useless junk that's usually found in this genre of literature. Who needs to ask things like "Pray, what breed of dog is this?" I travelled in Egypt with the LP guide for two months. Yet I didn't get far with Arabic: The writing was a stumbling block.
My breakthrough took place two years later in Tunisia with a tiny vocabulary book I found for a dollar in a local bookshop. It's not that the list of words was so great, but perhaps that I was ready to no longer be illiterate. On that trip, the alphabet fell into place. It was a great joy to be able to read signs. It seemed that learning had a chance to accelerate from there on. I felt that I was on my way.
Books and audio methods
Here I'd like to review some of the language methods I've come across. I'm a beginner, so I don't have the experience to say whether a method really works or not. I'm sharing my first impressions, with all the attached caveats. Apart from the Lonely Planet book already mentioned, here are the methods I've already seen or intend to review. I've had my hands on all these products at some stage through a friend or the library, but I don't own most of them. Often, therefore, my acquaintance with them is only passing.The most famous method is Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya. From the reviews I've read, this is the book every student loves to hate. It teaches MSA, so that doesn't interest me. The book has English and Arabic script but not the pronunciation, so you can't be sure you're reading it right. The DVD version now includes some street Arabic. You only start Al-Kitaab after you've done a preliminary course on the Arabic alphabet. That course is called "Alif Baa: Introduction to Arabic Letters and Sounds". For some reason, everything about these methods turns me off. Maybe it reminds me too much of school? Buy this if you want to torture yourself.
Arabic for Dummies. MSA, book and audio. In the book, all the Arabic words are "transliterated" (written in roman characters). That doesn't work for me: I can't imagine learning Arabic without using the alphabet. That's because Arabic words are built around a few root letters---that comes across in the Arabic script but not in the romanized script. By the end of the book, you're looking at a soup of letters. Lybian babies don't need the alphabet to learn Arabic, but they bathe in a pool of Arabic. Learning from abroad, the writing helps a lot, I think. Other than that, this is a very clean book that may have a lot of qualities. The tapes rely on the book: they are in Arabic, without English explanations. So you can't use them to learn on the train.
The Michael Thomas Method (Foundation Course and Advanced Course, Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar). Egyptian dialect. Audio-only program. The tape features two teachers and two students. The material is exquisitely organized. But Jane's pronunciation is awful, right from the basics. In Egypt, I've never heard "aiwa" (yes) pronounced as she does on this tape. It's only a few tapes so worth hearing to get you going, if you can find them at the library.
Syrian Colloquial Arabic. (Mary-Jane Liddicoat, Richard Lennane, Iman Abdul Rahim). My pick at the moment in the book and audio category. This was to be part of a series called "Integrated Arabic: A Functional Course". This seduced me from the start. The two Australian authors say they wrote the book they wished they'd had. Their approach was to teach a colloquial Arabic together with MSA so that you'd be able to speak on the street and watch the news. They were going to have a module for Egyptian colloquial Arabic and another for MSA, but they didn't get around to those, so the Syrian module is all we have. But we're lucky to have it! Syria is pretty central in the Arab world so this might be a decent pick for a colloquial language to learn. The first three chapters and audio files are free on the web, so you can test drive the method.
The First Thousand Words in Arabic (Heather Amery & Stephen Cartright). This is a gorgeous vocabulary builder. Each page has a picture of a daily life scene. The names of the objects are written in Arabic scripts and roman characters, so it also helps your reading.
Get By in Arabic (BBC). Egyptian colloquial Arabic. Fifty pages, four tapes. 1985: there's been progress in language education since then. Nevertheless, if you can get your hand on these old tapes, you won't be wasting your time. There's only four of them! They're recorded by native speakers, sometimes in street situations, and they have a certain charm. I love the speakers' accent in English. On the book, I like that the page numbers are written in Arabic. That's the only place in the book where you'see Arabic script, though.
Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar (Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar). MSA. The kind of reference book I used to buy and never use. From two authors who've produced a number of books on Arabic, including the "Colloquial Arabic of Egypt", which seems better suited to diplomats than to real people on the ground who want to break the cultural barrier.
The Arabic Alphabet: How to Read & Write It (Nicholas Awde & Putros Samano). My pick in the writing tutorials category. 1986. Oldie but goodie. Very handsome layout, a pleasure on the eyes. They do one job (teaching you the script) and they do it well. They don't try to teach you the language as well. I like that they explain the "ligatures" early on. A ligature is a special way of writing certain letter combinations. For instance, in English, some old presses have the "s" and the "t" running together when they print "st". That's not too hard to read, but in Arabic the ligatures look like totally different letters. The vast majority of pocket guides that introduce you to Arabic show you the alphabet but ommit the ligatures, which is a crime, because ligatures are used everywhere. I remember so many times sitting on buses in Dubai or Morocco or Egypt, trying to read something but being unable to because my language guide had left out the ligatures! Brain dead. Most of the major publishers do that.
Linguaphone Arabic. Read this one, it's a hoot. The website avertises a "PDQ course". The letters stand for "pretty darn quick". They say that "Native speakers take you to Turkey where you will learn all the essential/practical Arabic that you need to get by". Apart from the fact that the PDQ acronym turns me off, I'm not sure about travelling to Turkey to learn Arabic. Last time I went there, they still spoke Turkish. Arabic has nothing to do with it.
I've started listening to some other Linguaphone Arabic tapes (not PDQ). On first impression, the language is stuffy. It doesn't help that between segments they play the kind of music you'd expect to hear if Queen Elizabeth was walking in. Hello, we're learning Arabic, we like Arab music! The instructors speak to you as though you're retarded, but I don't mind that.
Conversational Arabic in Seven Days (Samy Abu-Taleb). No Arabic script, no good to me. It looks very well organized, so it might be excellent for someone else.
Beginner's Arabic Script (John Mace). Functional writing tutorial. For my taste, it tries to do too much (it tries to teach you the language as well). Boring vocabulary list (administrative, unemployment, objection). Nice cheat card at the back to cut out and take with you on the street.
Colloquial Arabic of Egypt (Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar). Book and tapes. About as colloquial as a stuffy dinner party. You'll learn how to address your butler. Handy next time you get an embassy job.
Making Out in Arabic (Fethi Mansouri). Not for me. Twenty years ago, I enjoyed my copy of "Making Out in Japanese". Now I cringe just imagining myself walking around in an Arab country carrying a book containing all these foul words. I want to make friends, not insult someone. A good start is to not associate with material that contains violence. That's just the "wrong energy". On the good side, all the phrases are written both in Arabic and in English transliteration.
Berlitz Language 30 (book and audio). MSA. A 25-page phrasebook with an eighty-minute tape. The tape stands alone, with Arabic phrases and their Arabic translation. I find this little tape particularly clear. If it were longer, I'd want more variety in the voices, but as it is the voice of the male Arabic speaker is gentle ad pleasant. As for the phrasebook, you're better off with the Lonely Planet, but the tape is a great refresher for the flight on the way over.
Build your Arabic Vocabulary (Haroon Shirwani). A 130-page book with one CD and flash cards: a neat little package. The CD goes through all the vocabulary in the book. It is very fast, you may not have time to repeat, and there is no translation. I guess it was designed for the time before we had the luxury of carrying twenty hours of audio on mp3. The book has a number of exercises, but no solutions, which makes it better suited to use with a teacher. Overall, I'd say this is a strong package, but not for self study.
Read and Speak Arabic (Jane Wightwick and Mahmoud Gaafar). I'm usually not a huge fan of these two authors. The exercises in this book may trigger bad memories from school. Nevertheless, the 53-minute CD is a decent vocabulary builder, although it requires the book on many tracks.
Kullu Tamam! An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Manfred Woidich and Rabha Heinen-Nasr, The American University in Cairo) Book plus one CD. The alphabet makes its first appearance on page 247. This book is meant for classroom use. It looks like it would be great with a teacher. Without a teacher, there will be too many comprehension gaps in the text. It's unfortunate that one of the male speakers sounds like someone just stepped on his toe.
Arabic with Ease (Assimil, 1979). MSA. I've always been allergic to Assimil. For me, they make learning a language as exciting as studying a VCR's operatin manual. This book is translated from two authors with Swiss-sounding names. Anyhow, it's MSA.
Write in Arabic (Nagla Ghali). Clean, but I find the Awde book more interesting, more beautiful, more alive.
Arabic in a Flash, volumes 1 and 2 (Fethi Mansouri, with Yousef Alreemawi for volume 2). MSA. I haven't used those yet, but I will if I ever want to get serious about MSA. What is spectacular in this card set is that they have grouped related words on a card. This is how Arabic works (related words sound the same), so this is a great approach.
Vocabulearn Arabic (audio only). Four CDs. The first two are lists of words, the second to are lists of words and expression. It may have a place within a broader study program. For my part, I've found that on their own lists do little for me. I need to hear words not alone, but in a context, in phrases, with other related words. Otherwise they just go in one ear and out the other.
Teach Yourself Arabic Listening to the last track in this series, I was impressed: it sounded like by that time you I would know a lot of Arabic. Nevertheless, it would have been slow progress, as the program has as much personality as a wet sock. I fell asleep on the first tape and snored for an hour. I guess I prefer when people sound like real people on coffee shops, with the background noise and all, like on the BBC tapes. Yes, I like that better than when teachers shoot one phrase after the next with the clinical tone of a surgeon annoucing that he's going to have to remove that mole.
Arabic - Living Language. An audio phrasebook. These guys disqualify themselves at the beginning when they spend a few minutes on phrases like "Can you point me in the direction of passport control" or "I have nothing to declare". In thirty years of tramping around the planet, I have never needed to say this in a foreign language. To me, these phrases just signals a publisher whose attitude is "Now that you paid for the book, we're going to give you the same useless canned stuff that we've been pushing on phrasebook buyers forever." It's a big scam, and I don't want to be a part of it. :)
Eastern Arabic (audio only) by Frank A. Rice & Majed F. Sa'id.
I only had access to the tapes (six hours and forty minutes). They teach the Arabic of Jerusalem (Palestinian Arabic), a good one to learn as it's pretty central in the Arab world. The instructor on the first tape sounds a bit like a drill sergeant. That and the homemade sound of the recording turned me off a bit, but I'll have another go someday.
Software
Rosetta Stone Arabic. I love it. Why does it have MSA? There is a speaking component and a writing component. Both are splendid. They make you associate sounds with images, at your speed. I know what I said about MSA, but this is so fun that I may just have to use it to add a bit of MSA to my street Arabic.
Learn Arabic Now MSA. I tried version 10. The module called "Before You Know It" shows flash cards. The lists I looked at (animals, meals etc) had about six cards each. The module called "Language Now" is the main program. You can record your own voice and see it displayed on a chart, but I'm not so sure you can learn a language. I couldn't quite figure out how to use this software, but my overall impression is that if I was going to learn MSA Arabic, and learn it on a computer, I'd go for Rosetta Stone. Much more 21st century.
Soon to be reviewed
At last, my review pile is empty. If you know a book or tapes series that is particularly outstanding, feel free to bring it to my attention, or better yet, send me a copy.Websites
To study Arabic online and exchange language lessons with native speakers, livemocha has a good reputation.Smiles,
Andy
ps: If you have enjoyed this page, I would be immensely grateful if you would link to it, bookmark it or share it. You can also comment using the form below.
This is a very useful summary. I recommend it to people regularly, especially when they are looking for MSA materials to complement their colloquial studies.
Hi from my experience i can say to learn to read arabic and get used to the alphabet use www.madinaharabic.com. Also for Egyptian arabic by far the best books are the Kallimni 'Arabi series by Samia louis.
I've been looking at the Rosetta Stone Arabic language course. They pronounce boy/girl/man etc with "oon" at the end of the noun.(ie' al waladoon yasharabo) But the books I've referred to the noun without the "oon. Can anyone explain?
They are pronouncing it with the full grammatical inclination. This sound is normally dropped by native speakers, but for learners I find it usefull until you get the hang of the Language, then you can drop it.
Have you checked this one out? It breaks down the 1,000 words in to general categories such as: General, Military, Economic, etc... and puts them in no certain order. Pretty handy to add to your vocabulary. On top of that, it only costs about $10.
Great review; I've also discovered a website that gives multimedia Arabic lessons, 24/7, at www.arabicollege.com. It helps to learn the pronunciation if you participate in live clasrooms.
I have not read the entire review, but my eye caught the comment of Assimil and while I will read the entire review I will do so with a lot of circumspection because I can say that I got most of my English knowledge from reading Assimil books. And I have taken up another language using Assimil because I find their method excellent. You may decide that my English is poor, but I can function with it. I went to Graduate school in the US and earned an MBA and a CIA and English is today my working language.
Hi Oumar,
Your English is fantastic. You're lucky that you're smart enough to use Assimil. I don't have the brains for it, it puts me to sleep.
Wishing you a beautiful day,
Smiles,
Andy
I have read the entire review now. With all due respect, this person simply does not know what she is talking about. I happen to know most of the material she has reviewed. The comments she makes about Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya simply do not make sense. This is probably one of the best Arabic books ever assembled. What this person is looking for is something magical, something you can acquire with no effort whatsoever and that simply does not exist. The Rosetta Stone she praises, is very basic and does not allow you to grasp the subtle aspects of formal Arabic! Yes Rosetta Stone should have used their method to teach the Arabic dialects, not formal Arabic, they could have in so doing achieved, though arguably, some degree of success.
Liguaphone is a great method, and to pick and highlight a little 'error speak Arabic in Turkey', probably made by some marketing person who has nothing to do with the language program itself shows the lack of seriousness of the review.
Hi Oumar,
Thanks for your message. I stand by my review of Al-Kitaab. It may be a great method for a bright person undertaking a formal course of study at a university, with drills, six hours of weekly instruction and so on. And that's assuming this person wants to learn formal Arabic. For almost everyone else, it's a massive sleeping pill. If you happen to be capable of studying on your own with such a method, you are a very lucky man.
Smiles,
Andy
Dear Andy,
I can tell you have been looking for a good, practical Arabic tutorial for a long time. Your reviews are grounded and have given me excellent guidance. In your search, have you come up with any good gulf arabic lessons? I live in Abu Dhabi and would love some guidance on where I can learn local dialect (I know immersion is the best way). CD or software is best as I have a busy life with kids and work. I need a starting place to get a good base.
Alicia
thanks Andy, how ya going? this is such a great review. I had no idea there was so much available. I love the thread that goes through this to find courses which are light in tone, accessible and based on real spoken Arabic.
If you are looking for MSA and need something less rigid than a set course, try giving the website http://www.naturalarabic.com a try. It is especially useful for those wanting to gain proficiency in the Media aspect of MSA.
Hi Andy,
Thank you so much for providing such a detailed review. I've been using the Pimsleur method since July of this year for Eastern Arabic and it has worked very well for me. I'm already up to Lesson 4 in the Comprehensive 3 section; There are 3 sections: I, II, III, each containing 30 lessons.
I've also just started using their reading booklet to learn how to read the script as well and highly recommend their system.
http://www.pimsleur.com/About-The-Programs
It's somewhat pricy but definitely worth the money. pimsleurmarketplace.com has it the cheapest; you get $100 credit when you mail it back versus what they have it for on amazon and on the official pimsleur website.
thanks iwant to learn arabic