Customer Reviews

Arabic-English/English-Arabic Concise Romanized Dictionary: Egyptian and Syrian (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary)

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This Dictionary is very suitable for people who only learn how to understand and speak Colloquial Arabic. In my teaching I use romanized Arabic texts. For students mastering the basics, this Dictionary is very suitable.

I've found this to be very useful as I'm still a rather middling beginner with Arabic script and verb conjugations. I've been able to communicate better with my Arab friends without fumbling with an Arabic-English dictionary that lacks transliterations and phrases. I can't comment on whether this book contains errors, but I have found a lot of phrases and terms that have been helpful and which also agree with the modest vocabulary I already know. If you don't know the Arabic script or don't know it well, this will be useful in accessing words and phrases to fill out your speech. It's not exhaustive by any means, and it you may find that it doesn't make use of the broad range of dialectic differences across 17 Arabic speaking countries, but there aren't many like it. Hippocrene also makes an English->Arabic phrasal dictionary which uses Roman script (our alphabet) which is a good companion. Not a substitute for learning other aspects of the language ->writing system, customs, etc.