Customer Reviews

A Grammar of the Arabic Language Combined Volume Paperback (v. 1 & 2)

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First, anyone considering this book needs to understand that this is a reference grammar, not a textbook for learning Arabic. The material is arranged by parts of speech and by grammatical concepts, not as a series of lessons going from simple to more complicated. There are no exercises and no excerpts for reading practice (although all discussions of grammar and semantics are illustrated by examples). The level of the book is not for beginners.

The main drawback is a level of unneeded complexity that is maintained in many sections of the book by the use of Latin grammatical terms and by trying to look at Arabic through the concepts of English grammar. The chapters on Syntax are especially notable for this. It is there that we find such gems of clarity
as :

If two *correlative* clauses follow the
hypothetical particles law (if), law 'anna
(if that), lawlaa, lawmaa and lawlam (if not), [*]
the verbs in both clauses have usually the
significance of our pluperfect subjunctive
or potential, though occasionally too of our
imperfect subjunctive or potential.

This is further "clarified" by the footnote:

[*] The protasis of a sentence, when introduced
by lawlaa, although it may not have a verb
actually expressed, yet includes a verbal idea,
viz. that of the verb kaana.

This creates the impression that Arabic hypothetical sentences are super-complex, and their meanings are difficult to grasp. In fact, there is nothing particularly hard about the sentences used to illustrate this discussion, and most of the difficulty comes from trying to arrange English and Arabic into parallel structures. I find it hard to recommend the Syntax section of the book, which has pages upon pages of such explanations. But many other parts (such as the discussion of the forms of the verb) are lucid and helpful, probably because there aren't any English parallels to get in the way.

I also find that the fonts and the typesetting are not great. Looking at the pages for a long time fatigues the eyes.

I feel that I must mention that the price ... seems unreasonably high to me.

In summary, the book is good, but make sure that this is what you want.

This book can offer something most studies of Arabic do not. In learning Arabic, you will most likely be exposed to either the western method or the traditional method. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. This book obviously is a not the traditional approach, as such you will see such a thoroughness of investigation into the language that you may be overwhelmed. So, to use this to learn Arabic may be very difficult. However if you do have some knowledge of Arabic this book will help to make clear much of what is instinctual to the Arab's tongue, though they cannot explain it. For example, the simple verb form of qatala has the same vowel throughout, but taking that same form with another word like "he heard" it would be sami'a. I've met few Arabs that can explain this phenomenon by other than saying "that's just how it is, you have to memorize it". This book offers can some insight even into such details of the Arabic language. It also ends with a thorough section of Arabic poetry, wherein all the "oceans" are explained.