Customer Reviews

Arabic-English Dictionary: The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

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First, I must say this is the only Modern Written Arabic (MWA) - English dictionary that the student of Arabic has to have. Others, Al-Mawrid, for example, are useful as supplements, and contain new vocabulary, and there is a more recent German edition (5th edition) of Wehr published by Harrassowitz, but this book has a standard of scholarship unrivalled by any other MWA-English dictionary. Middle Eastern published MWA-English dictionaries like Mawrid, for example, don't give the grammatical information learners of Arabic need, such as broken plurals, verbal vowelling, verbal nouns (masdars), let alone how verbs are used with prepositions, all of which Wehr tells the user.

Words are in root order, so maktaba (desk) [mktbh] and kaatib (writer) [k'tb] both are found under the verb kataba (to write) [ktb]. This really is the most useful way of ordering Arabic dictionaries for someone who's mastered the basics of Arabic grammar, though an alphabetic order dictionary is a help when you're starting and occasionally even when you're expert.

This dictionary is NOT a dictionary of Classical Arabic (although Beeston in his anthology of Bassar bin Burd reckoned that Wehr covered the vast majority of the vocabulary of this poet of the 8th Century AD). For Classical Arabic, Lane (perhaps supplemented by Hava's much more affordable al-Fara'id) is essential. But Lane is useless for modern Arabic. And if you're reading mediaeval Arabic, you will find Wehr fills in some of the gaps in Lane.

This dictionary is NOT a dialect dictionary, though it contains many dialect words that have found their way into the written Arabic of Egypt, Iraq, etc. Arabs don't write colloquial Arabic (at least not in formal contexts) and dialect dictionaries are specialized (colloquial Arabic-English dictionaries are usually written in a phonetic transcription rather than in the Arabic script). If you need a dialect dictionary, get one. This isn't one.

Other reviewers have rightly commented on the size of this dictionary, but some have confused editions. The 3rd (SLS paperback) edition was 114 x 162 x 45mm (4.5" x 6.4" x 1.75") in size, weighed 0.65 kg and had tiny 5.5 pt print. The 4th (SLS paperback) edition is larger: 216 x 130 x 40mm (5.2" x 8.5" x 1.5"), weighs 0.8 kg and has 7.5 pt print. This makes the SLS 4th edition's print much more readable than the SLS 3rd edition's.

The 4th edition, which is sewn-bound, is also more robust than the 3rd edition, which was perfect-bound - I'm on my 3rd copy of the 3rd edition while my 4th edition soldiers on after 8 years. However, the book is not really pocket sized any more (I still keep using my last copy of the 3rd edition as a pocket copy).

The 4th edition isn't cheap (it costs much more in England than in the US, though). If you're in the Middle East, you can pick up Librarie du Liban hardback copies of the 3rd edition (it has larger print than either of the two paperbacks - about 8 pt, the size of the original Brill 3rd edition - and is very clear) for a little less. There's also a hardback reprint of the pocket-sized 3rd edition available in the UK, which has rather unclear script. It's a straight copy of the SLS 3rd edition, and is Indian. It's usable, but is the least satisfactory version yet. But I'd advise students to get the SLS 4th edition if they can afford it. If you've lots of money, perhaps get the Harrassowitz hardback - I've not done so. And if you've money and German, get the 5th Harrassowitz edition (Arabisches Wörterbuch für die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart).

[I have now bought the 4th Harassowitz English edition. The text is slightly crisper and half a point to a point larger, about 8 pt. The paper is less over-bleached, which makes it a bit easier on the eyes too. J.L.]

I am a former Army Arabic linguist, and a graduate of DLI/FLC Monterey. This dictionary is the primary one we used, both at DLI and later on the job. An old Army buddy, I have a deep abiding affection for this thing, it being a true linguistic masterpiece and longtime companion.

Hans Wehr was professor at University of Munster from the fifties thru the seventies. This dictionary was first published in 1952 in German as "Arabisches Worterbuch fur die Schriftsprache der Gegenwart" - a mouthful of a title if there ever was one. We just called it the Hans Wehr. To my knowledge, it is the only dictionary that's organized to properly exploit Arabic morphology, which is to say the consonal root system.

Any other approach makes a hash out of the Arab language. Straightforward alphabetical ordering is ill suited to Arabic. The only traditionally alphabetically organized Arabic dictionary that I've seen (and I've seen quite a few) which is any good at all is the Lebanese Al-Mawrid. But I use it only as an occasional adjunct to Hans. Once you get a hang of Hans, and your vocabulary and sense of Arabic grows, the Mawrid will only be very occasionally useful from Arabic to English. It may not seem possible to a beginner (it certainly didn't to me,) but the Hans Wehr will come to make much more sense, and become much more accessible, than any other Arabic to English dictionary. So if you are new to this game, suck it up and use Hans as much as possible.

One sole caveat: for Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the Hans Wehr is incomprable & indespensible. MSA is the modern universally written form of Arabic, and the pan-national lingua franca spoken in formal settings- on TV, in courts, etc., by educated Arabs. Note, though, that the local dialectical and classical forms of Arabic are very different balls of wax, and with them this dictionary can be of only limited application. I found it pretty wanting when dealing with Egyptian dialect while in Cairo, for example. For the Gulf, Jordan, Palestine and rest of the Levant it's a little more useful.

A brief grammatical explanation as to why the Hans is the only game in town (sorry if this is redundant or too didactic, but everyone should know what the deal is:)

As others have said here, the majority of the words in Arabic are derived from a three (usually) consonant verbal root. You take the consonants - e.g., KTB which denotes writing, or 'KH'RJ denotes outward movement - and vowel them with fatahs, or short 'a' sounds (which like all short vowel sounds are unrepresented in everyday writing) and you get KaTaBa, which basically means "he wrote" or KHaRaJa which means "he went out" - both the 3rd person masculine past perfect. This is used as the essential base form of the verb, equivalent to the infinitive in an Indo-European language.

By changing the unwritten "short vowels" (re-vowelling) and by adding other written "long vowel" and consonal sounds, you can generate a slew of words related to the verb in question. For example, by adding an M (mim) to the KTB (MaKTaB) you get "office." An A (alif)(AKTuB) gives you "I write." MaKTaBA = library. KiTAB = book. KHaRUJ = exit. KHRAJ = tax. KHiREEJ= graduate MaKHRaJ = place of exit. You get the idea.

Yet it gets crazier, and more beautiful, still.

By voweling this consonal root in different ways, and by adding other consonants as prefixes or suffixes, you place the verb in different measures. Now this is critical: measures are different forms the verb takes to change its meaning. They are one of the main reasons Arabic is such a zany, beautiful (some would say opaquely impenetrable) labyrinth of meaning. There are (I believe) 26 different measures in Classical Arabic. Just thank Allah that the modern Arabs have cut that number down to 10 in Modern Standard. Ten is wild enough. They are explained in the introduction of the Hans Wehr pp. xii - xv. Read these pages. They help explain the signifigance of all the roman numeralled entries in the dictionary.

All of the above means, of course, that an straight, western style alphabetical dictionary is nearly incoherent in Arabic. The fact that verbs all have all the same classes of prefixes, and the same patterns of internal suffixes & suffixes, not to mention complex patterns of conjugation in all the measures & moods, means that you have potentially hundreds of words for each of dozens of prefixes and patterns. And the voweling issue clouds things even further. That's not even to mention further insanity such as irregular nominal plurals, cases (nunation!) & other nominal suffixes (NB: beware verbal nouns.) Our Germanic/Latinate linear methodologies just don't apply very neatly. Better to approach the system as it's organized: radically.

Better to go from the heart from which all the meaning radiates, the root system, and classify words thereby. The roots are all listed alphabetically, but their relatives are all listed under them. Thus nouns like MaKTaB, MaKTaBA, KiTAB, and even more complex permutations such as AKTiTAB (registration) or ASTiKTAB (dictation), etc. will all be found under KTB on pp. 951 & 952 of Hans. Irregular plurals are of course listed under their singular form.

The nouns are just the appetizer, though.

The real piece de resistance are the aforementioned roman numeralled enteries of the main root entery. These give you the meanings of the measures. Not every verb is put into every measure- some are only in practice used in one or two. KTB is used in the I, II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII, & Xth measures. Referring to the introduction pp. xii-xv, you see that PP 3rd masc. sing. measure I is KaTaBa, to write. KAaTBa is measure III, which means to correspond. VI, TaKATBa also means to correspond (get used to redundancy in Arabic, as well as *ahem* apparent contradiction.. You will learn to savour repetition & ambiguity!) Measure X, ASTaKTaBa means to dictate..

And so forth.

Abberations, cognates and foreign words - which ironically will probably throw you for a loop quicker than native Arab ones will - are listed in straight alphabetical fashion among the roots.

You have to begin to learn the morphology, learn to i.d. roots in your sleep, and internalize the patterns. Then pick up the Hans Wehr and let the fun begin!

At DLI one of our profs has created a "Conjugations of the Ten Measures" verb chart which is requisite to fully & easily utilizing this dictionary, especially for beginning and intermediate students. It apparently exists in no other place. I don't know why there isn't one in the Hans, seeing as how all those nutty German positivists have seemingly considered & fully classified nearly everything else. Try googling it, maybe you can dig it up online. Or else try to run a DLI Arabic alum down, and get a copy off him or her. If all else fails, you can perhaps construct a similar chart using the Hans (again, pp. xii - xv) and a good grammar book. I have my chart sealed to the back of my dictionary for easy reference.

This dictionary strips the patterns of the Arab language bare. This incredible semantic superstructure is one even many native speaking Arabs are mostly unaware of. Still, sometimes - okay, maybe often - this dictionary (like scientific things can so often do) kills the puppy, dissects it, and gives you a chart. But the essence of that puppy isn't in the chart. It's a more metaphysical reality. A living, breathing, wriggling thing, one that requires much more intuition than logic to understand.. The Arab language is just such a reality. Another semantic universe, truly exotic to an English speaking mind, a vivid poetic wonder.

You know, studying Arabic is a real pleasure. It's truly sublime.

Anyway, this is the dictionary you must own if you are in any way serious about Arabic. Using it can be a both exhilarating (no joke) yet exasperating and loopy experience, given how it represents the culmination of centuries of Orientalist scholarship.. Which means it is both a huge triumph, yet somehow simultaneously a subtle subterranean disaster. The Teutonic mania for clinical order and classification creasing into the envelopping cyclically anarchic mystery of the Semitic mind... Or something like that.

In any case, it is a masterpiece, which is good seeing as how it's apparently nearly all we've got.

The Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary is simply the best...and totally indispensable. I don't know how you cold get by learning Arabic without it! I studied Arabic for several years, and got more use out of this dictionary than out of any other reference source BY FAR. If you don't believe me, I wish I could show you a picture of my dictionary now -- it's been used so much it's in pieces (obviously, I need to go out and buy a new one!). The most difficult thing (which can get frustrating, but like a puzzle, once you unlock the secret, everything starts clicking into place) is you've got to know the root of a word in order to find it in here. But that's the challenge -- and beauty -- of Arabic, possibly the world's richest, most poetic, amazing language; once you know the root a whole world of rich variations on the basic root meaning (i.e. DRS=study; mudarris=teacher, or one who MAKES you study!) starts to open up. No matter what level of Arabic you're at, you need this dictionary!

This dictionary was required for the three years of Arabic that I took at the university. It enjoys a unique status as a "famous" dictionary. According to the introduction, it is an updated and expanded English version of Mr. Wehr's 1952 Arabic-German dictionary. And it is not a bad book! Though I wouldn't say that it is intended for travelers, beginners or armchair linguists. (My review refers to the pocket-book sized edition.)

THE GOOD: 1) It is small and easily transportable. This makes it especially pleasing to the university crowd. 2) It has quite a lot of words. All of these entries mean that I was almost always able to find the word that I was looking for. 3) Useful entries. The entries include all of the stuff that you would usually find in a foreign language dictionary, but they are also incredibly tailored to Arabic learners. For example, the verbs in the dictionary include Roman numerals indicating the meanings of the derived stems - and believe you me - this was very nice! Also, the nouns include the plural forms - also a very helpful feature. 4) While the Arabic words in the dictionary don't have diacritical marks indicating Arabic vowel sounds, it does have phonetic transliterations. This makes it easy to pronounce unfamiliar words, plurals and case endings.

THE BAD: 1) It is a small paperback dictionary. This makes for two problems - the covers wear out extremely fast, and the book doesn't stay open to any page without some sort of major intervention. 2) This dictionary is for MODERN WRITTEN Arabic only! This is too bad, because you won't find and spoken colloquialisms or dialect expressions. In fact, the first six pages of the book explain the problems and difficulties associated with creating a multi-use Arabic dictionary. 3) There are no example sentences for the entries. This would have been useful for those "ten definitions" type of words. 4) There are no appendices. Also too bad. 5) I said it before, and I'll say it again: this dictionary is not for anyone who does not have at least some Arabic under his or her belt! Users need to know how to read and write in Arabic, as well as how to look up words based on their root. If you can't do these, or have no intention of ever learning how - then you shouldn't get this book.

Even though I have written more bad things than good things, I just want to make it clear that this is an incredibly useful dictionary for serious Arabic learners. In fact, as far as I could tell, it was THE ONLY DICTIONARY among my colleagues. Worth every dinar!

I've been using this dictionary for four years and i've used other dictionaries as well. The Al-Mawrid Arabic-English dictionary may have just as many words in it or more, but the definitions are actually definitions in this dictionary (not just synonyms). I like the compactness of this dictionary, it's easy to carry around and store yet comprehensive enough to find virtually any Arabic word if you know the root. There has never been a word I couldn't find in it after I knew the proper root of an Arabic word.

This is by far the best Arabic-English Dictionary out there. It is based on Arabic's triletter root system, and not based on alphabetic order.

For example: 'to write' is kataba- from the three letters kaf-ta-ba. But desk, which is clearly a related word, is maktab. so, you will find 'desk' under 'kaf' and under 'kaf-ta-ba' but not under 'meem.'

Thus, you can't be a complete beginner to use this dictionary. (Ie, if what I mentioned above sounds like complete gibberish, this dictionary is not for you- yet!)

Sometimes it takes awhile, as for every word, you need to figure out the triletter root- not always easy or straight forward (Ie, what is the root for ishtara? Surprisingly, it is ta-ra-ya!)

However, as others have mentioned, the Arabic language mandates that this is the only real way to organize an Arabic-English Dictionary. Related words are all gathered together: ie, once you figure out the root of a word (say of maktab is kaf-ta-ba) you have some idea of not only what maktab could mean, but related words with the same root (ie, maktaba- library). An alphabetical dictionary does not preserve this aspect of Arabic and makes for much page turning to find meanings of even related words.

Note, such organization is not only useful for looking up words, but also helps one learn the language- ie, after you have been using the dictionary for awhile, you become increasingly familiar with the root system, verbal derivations (ie, the ten verb forms) as well as noun/adjective derivations.

Also useful in learning the language are the verb conjugation aids (ie, ktb u- the 'u' next to ktb means that the verb is conjugated in a certain way) and transliterations (although one wonders why diacritical marks aren't used instead).

Finally, some common phrases related to the triletter root are included which saved me from many headaches- as direct translations sometimes do not work! Ie, 'a-ba-ya' is to refuse. The phrase 'abaya il an yafalu' literally means something like 'he refused except that he does it' which doesn't make much sense, but the dictionary defines it as 'he insisted on doing it.'

Learn to use this great tool, and you'll not only find the meaning of all Arabic words (at least I have so far!) but also learn the intricacies of this great language.

I had to buy this book twice, the second time I bought the normal sized version (which is about 6" x 9"). This particular version being reviewed here is just TOO small and you will need to invest in a magnifying glass just to attempt to read the script - and then you'll not be able to anyway because the ink is too thick. You are better off not getting this version in the first place and buying the larger version - believe me you will not regret that decision. BTW, I have totally normal vision, no glasses, no sight problems (in case you are wondering !!!)

I learned Arabic at the Defense Language Institute where they've used Hans Wehr for some time. At first I must say that it is quite hard to use until you've learned how to derive the root from a word, the alphabet of course, forms of words, and verb measures. Therefore I would definitely advise you to start with a cheap dictionary which is more easily understandable, at least until you learn the basics. Having said that, I have to tell you that anyone who says this is not a good dictionary was most likely just frustrated because they had not learned the basics yet. If you look the reviews, you'll notice that most complaints were from people trying to learn Arabic from the beginning with Hans Wehr. You'll also notice that anyone even remotely familiar with Arabic can't seem to praise it enough. Thats because once you're through learning the root system you are going to realize that the Hans Wehr is by far the most comprehensive and useful dictionary you'll find unless you're studying a very technical or esoteric subject. I guarantee that once you get your foundation in the language and have used this dictionary for a little while, other dictionaries will simply piss you off with how superficial and disconnected they seem. Just give it a little time.

I'm pretty damn serious. I have found rare words and rare synonyms of good words. If a word can not be found in the Oxford Arabic-English dictionary, or any other dictionary I've used, at least 50% of the time I found it in the Hans Wehr. This is an excellent resource for Arabic speakers and non-indigenous speakers who are learning or learned Arabic. A life-saver in many take-home essay exams.

I've used many Arabic - English dictionaries and none were ever able to match the quality of the Hans Wehr, which was my first. My searches for other dictionaries were prompted by laziness, I wanted less and not more definitions, which can complicate matetrs when you're just staring to learn a language as complicated as Arabic. Moreover, the dictionary is arranged according to root, so it requires a good understanding of how to derive roots form words - Muhammad, for instance, is under H not M as the root is HMD.Once you have grasped this concept, so target your early lessons to that end you will enjoy the Hans Wehr and use it anytime you want to trasnalte written text from Arabic to English. I stress the 'written' part, as this dictionary is not very useful in conversations and does not intend to be. So if communicating in the Suq of Amman or the bazaar in Damascus is what you want, I would recommend anything but Hans Wehr. If you want to read "Al-AHram" on ther other hand, this is the dictionary for you