Customer Reviews

Beginner's Iraqi Arabic with 2 Audio CDs (Arabic Edition)

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This is not only a timely book, but one so well done

it makes a significant addition to the field. Growing

interest in Arabic in the United States, especially

Iraqi Arabic, has spurred a number of competent

teachers and scholars to write books, dictionaries,

handbooks, guides, and the like. Nawal Nasrallah and

Nadia Hassani's Beginner's Iraqi Arabic is one of

these new welcome contributions. It is an extensive

coverage of the language by native speakers that

manages to be very practical, concise, varied, and

entertaining. The two CDs are especially well-done and

they should make the chore of learning Iraqi dialect

more efficient.

Among the book's many virtues is a remarkably

down-to-earth approach that makes no assumptions about

learners' backgrounds, ability to learn foreign

languages, familiarity with the culture, and so on. It

provides readers with opportunities to learn the

spoken language dominant in Iraq, and opens up for

them the language through lively dialogues and usage

and pronunciation exercises so that they pick up

important cultural details. The dictionary part in the

book is extensive and very helpful since it has both

Arabic/English, and English/Arabic entries.

As a teacher of Arabic, I find the book very useful

and I intend to use it for my university classes.

It is a wonderful course. However, my best time to listen to the CD's is when I drive to and from work but I am finding it difficult to follow without being able to look at the book.

I was dissapointed to find that one of the CDs in the book was damaged. I have been trying to get a hold of the publisher and have not had any luck.