Teach Yourself Arabic - 2 Audio CDs and Book
Brand New (still shrink wrapped): 2 CDs and Book
The Arabic taught in this book/CD pack is the standard written language of more than 150 million inhabitants of the Arab states, ranging from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east. The language you will learn is based on the kind of material seen in Arabic newspapers and magazines, or heard on radio and television news broadcasts. In modern everyday life in the Arab countries, so-called vernacular or dialect Arabic has supplanted Standard Arabic for spoken communication, but all these dialects derive from the parent root. If you have a grounding in Standard Arabic it will be easier to learn the modern local dialects which are based on it. Standard Arabic is also the lingua franca of the Arab world and can be understood anywhere in conversation with educated speakers. The course begins with a guide to Arabic script and throughout the book there is an English transliteration (English letters) to help you with reading and pronunciation. The 18 thematically written units are carefully graded and present new language via dialogues, which are also recorded. These are followed by questions and exercises to help you check your progress. The new vocabulary is given in both Arabic script and in transliteration.
In addition to clear and full explanations of new grammar, you will find cultural tips which highlight some of the social and cultural aspects of life in the Arab world and which you will find invaluable on any trip. At the end of the coursebook you will find a Glossary of Grammar Terms, a Grammar Summary of the main structures of the Arabic language, a set of Verb Tables and reference sections of Arabic Numerals and plurals. Finally there are Arabic-English and English-Arabic glossaries so you can look up words alphabetically and a Grammar Index to help you look up specific points.
The accompanying double CD provides approximately 2 hours of listening material.
* Arabic script - there is a comprehensive introduction to reading and writing the script, with lots of practice and help.
* Transliteration - throughout the book there is English transliteration (English spelling) to help with pronunication.
* Accessibility - Frances Altorfer brings her experience of foreign language teaching in secondary schools to the author team, so the grammar explanations are always clear and do not assume any prior grammatical knowledge.
* Illustrations and authentic material - the book is lavishly illustrated to help comprehension and make the book come to life.
About the Author:
Before he retired, Jack Smart was Lecturer in Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Exeter. Frances Altorfer was a modern languages' teacher for many years.
About the Arabic Language
Arabic is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. Classified as Central Semitic, it is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and has its roots in a Proto-Semitic common ancestor. Modern Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage with 27 sub-languages in ISO 639-3. These varieties are spoken throughout the Arab world, and Standard Arabic is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world.
Modern Standard Arabic derives from Classical Arabic, the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested epigraphically since the 6th century, which has been a literary language and the liturgical language of Islam since the 7th century. Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, as Latin has contributed to most European languages. And in turn, it has also borrowed from those languages, as well as Persian and Sanskrit from early contacts with their affiliated regions. During the Middle Ages, Arabic was a major vehicle of culture, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy, with the result that many European languages have also borrowed numerous words from it especially Spanish and Portuguese, countries it ruled for 700 years (see Al-Andalus).
"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the North African dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding North Africans (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fīh, and North African kayən all mean "there is", and all come from classical Arabic forms (yakūn, fīhi, kā'in respectively), but now sound very different.
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