Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Iraqi Arabic: English-Arabic, Arabic-English (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Languages and Linguistics series) (Arabic Edition)

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As a university graduate in Arabic and as a teacher of Arabic I can say that this dictionary is a great help for learners of Iraqi dialect. As other customers have stated before, it must be stressed that this is a DIALECT dictionary and not a MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) dictionary. Arabic idalects are hardly, if ever written, except maybe in folk stories collections aimed at investigators or in the odd proverbs compilation, and are much more written by foreigners than by Arabs. In fact most of the Arabs simply don't know how to write their own dialect (if they ever have thought it should be written). In view of this, the use of Arabic script in a dialect dictionary is totally a waste of time and effort, because it means you must adapt a system which is well suited for Standard Arabic to the dialect which functions in quite a different way phonologically and morphophonologicaly. The Iraqi dialect has at least 3 phonemes that do not exist in Standard Arabic (ch, g and p) and a lot of emphatic spreading (as other dialects) which cannot properly be represented using Arabic script except if we add leters taken from Persian. But then where's the difference from using the Persian alphabet or using a Roman transliteration except that transliteration is almost the norm when dealign with dialects (even among many Arab linguists)? Nearly all the material on Arabic dialects is in transliteration, so a learner does not need to go through Arabic script when he just wants to learn to speak a dialect so he can straight concentrate in speaking, while advanced students of MSA dealing with dialect can easily transfer transliterated words to Arabic scripts (when they exist in MSA) so I do not understand the problem with romanization.
Another reviewer deplored the lack of guidelines on prosodical information (the music and rythm of the language) so useful to learn to speak, but it must be stressed that nobody learns to speak using a dictionary, to learn to speak in any language you must (first of all of course hear it spoken and try to speak it) use a coursebook or other pedagogical material, which a dictionary IS NOT, a dictionary is reference material to help you expand your vocabulary, but it's useless if you havent' the basics of a language which you must acquire in a language course(book).
My only complain is that, in fact, this dictionary is the sum of two different independent dictionaries written by different hands. So entries in the E-A part do not match entries in the A-E section (which is much larger), and also as the E-A part is based on an earlier English-German dictionary there are some entries which aren't culturally and socially useful in Iraqi society (such as blondette) while other words for important items in Arabic society (clothes, food) do not appear in the E-A section.
Except for this inconsistencies (which appear in the other Arabic dictionaries of this serie) this dictionary is a great useful tool for learners of Iraqi dialect.

As much as I like to see words in the orginal script, you are unfortunately at a loss if you do not already know the basics of the dialect when you see the words written in Arabic script. As others have noted, probably the best way for dialect to be represented is either by a set of roman letters or by an internationally accepted script based on Arabic. Since the latter is a bit advanced for most non-native Arabic or Farsi speakers, the system in this book is the best alternative.

To illustrate, take the basic word for "coffee," a simple, universal concept in the Middle East.
In MSA, it's Qahwa
In Hijazi and other Gulf dialects, it's Gahwa
In Syria and Lebanon, it's 'Ahwa.
But in arabic script, they are all spelled the same.

If not for the romanized pronunciations, how would you know, unless you already had experience with those dialects?

Well, I have spent a year in Iraq and will soon spend another, so I look forward to putting this resource to good use.

I agree with another reviewer...it's more helpful to have everything written in Arabic. And, while the dialect is technically not a written language, there are ways to write it...modifications that have been made to aid in the pronounciation of the dialect while still using Arabic letters. That would be MUCH better.

A very timely book that I found to be quite useful. I've been studying arabic for over a decade and have yet to find a better book which is so methodical in its approach.

This dictionary was written by linguists and is an essential tool for anyone who wants to become proficient in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. The transliteration can be an obstacle at first, but there are only five or six letters that are different from English, and anyone who has learned any Arabic can learn those as well. As has been stated in other reviews, the transliteration is essential to representing the sounds of the language. The big problem is NOT just the three consonants in Iraqi that are not found in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) (ch, p, and hard g)--an even bigger problem is how the short vowels float around in the Arabic dialects when different suffixes are added. There is also assimilation of some consonants where they are pronounced other than written. When people who know the Arabic script see Iraqi written that way, their tendency is to pronounce the words in the MSA way, which is often wrong.

The examples are worth their weight in gold.

As for the order in which the words are listed in the Arabic-English section of the book, they follow the Arabic roots. A serious student just has to master that system early on.

By the way, Iraqi IS written now, A LOT. Young people in the Arab world, like elsewhere, are heavily into e-mail, blogs and chatrooms, and much of that is written in dialect. The spelling is not standardized, either in roman or Arabic script, just like blogs and e-mails in English.

This is a very useable resource. From a pragmatic perspective, if it works, don't fix it. I agree it is difficult to deal with romanized script at first, but I'm leaning it.
If you are going to to spend time in Iraq or working with the dialect, this book fills a gap left between Hans Wehr and other MSA materials, and the basic Iraqi phrasebooks which are so easy to find. Highly recommended for all professionals in this field. The written examples included for each definition are particularly helpful, and give one a feel for how dialogue is structured in Iraq.

Spoken Iraqi dialect is never written. Written Arabic is actually a different language, a scholastic artifact. Buy this book if you are working through a colloquial course or building vocabulary lists for specialized work with real Iraqis. Information not found ANYWHERE else.

The fact that this dictionary is in romanized Arabic is a positive aspect for beginning learners of the language. Beginners can make much more progress with the aural-oral aspects of the language and understanding of the grammar if they can learn the language in a familiar orthography. Also, since the Arabic script is basically phonetic (unlike Chinese, for example), the written form can always be learned later.

On another positive side, in both the English to Arabic and Arabic to English parts of this dictionary, there are many useful examples of how entries are used in REAL sentences. This is very useful to the learner, and helpful in expanding one's vocabulary and general idiomatic knowledge.

Unfortunately, this dictionary has a couple of major problems, as I see it, at least for the learner. The first thing is, in the English to Arabic portion, it gives the "third person singular form of the perfect verb", which seems to be standard, but I think for the learner's sake, the third person singular of the IMPERFECT form of the verb should also be there. It does not appear to be the case in this dictionary. One needs BOTH forms to be able to conjugate verb forms in both of the Arabic "tenses".

Secondly, the Arabic to English part of this dictionary appears to be a version of some very old dictionary that has been "resurrected". Instead of doing whole words with their attendant vowels, only consonants are given, so when you go to look up a word, you have to first think what the first two or three consonants are in the word, and then begin your attempt to find the word.

Unfortunately, most of the words I tried to look up in romanized Arabic were not in the dictionary; very common words, in fact. So I am not sure what the authors are thinking of with this half of the dictionary. Quite frankly, I don't understand how it is used, and there don't seem to be any instructions on how to do so. Of course I am just a beginning student of the language, so maybe I am missing something here. It makes me want to contact the authors for some sort of explanation.

I think the Arabic to English portion of this book should be arranged like, for example, like the Erwin vocabulary lists at the end of his course on Iraqi Arabic. (an excellent work on learning Iraqi Arabic, by the way.) (The Alkalesi book "Modern Iraqi Arabic" is also quite good.) In other words, put the romanized Iraqi words into a "normal" dictionary format instead of whatever this book presents with the three consonants. I know for this learner, this is a very difficult book to try to use to look up words in romanized Arabic.

Great dictionary for Iraqi. In fact it is the only one I have ever been able to find.

This book is ok for looking up words in english and finding the iraqi pronounciation. It is useless for looking up words in arabic and finding the english (unless you want to learn a whole new transliteration language.) Know this, there is NO ARABIC SCRIPT in this book. You are expected to learn a transliteraiton system that is as difficult as just spending two weeks and learning arabic script. Really dumb guys. Next time, include the arabic. This book isn't terribly useful.