Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Modern Literary Arabic

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This introduction to the literary language is indeed excellent. Cowan provides detailed, clear explanations of grammatical points and moves in a logical progression through the material. The book is most decidedly not of the "Teach Yourself" type, in that it is presumed that the reader is educated and familiar with grammatical terminology, and it does not interface with the spoken language.

I can only compare it with Haywood and Nahmad's "New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language", which it resembles considerably. (Cowan was published by Cambridge, whereas Haywood and Nahmad was published by Oxford - interesting!). I learned Arabic with the Haywood and Nahmad book, which I preferred and which I felt provided more background material than Cowan. Cowan is much more concise, which in my opinion is not necessarily an asset in this subject. You may want to check out both of these books; they are both still in print, both available through Amazon and were both published about the same time (1950's) and therefore somewhat dated, although not as much as you might think.

If you're shopping around for a self-teacher of literary Arabic a third title you may investigate is Wheeler Thackston's "Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic", which is also available through Amazon and which some students might find more amenable. Professor Thackston expects the would-be learner to be intelligent, but possibly less linguistically sophisticated than the Oxbridge books do. The only other choice I would recommend is a set of four books by an Austrian Arabist named Kaplivatsky (The books are in English). They were first published in the 1940's and were in print up until at least 20 years ago. Kaplivatsky really teaches you the classical idiom, and when you're done with him you can read Abu Nuwas without difficulty. I gave them away to a budding Arabic student some time ago and I have regretted it ever since. Does anybody know if they're still around?

Far surpassing in quality the few other beginning textbooks available, David Cowan's "Introduction to Modern Literary Arabic" certainly is a sine qua non to students of the Arabic language. The grammar within is clearly, concisely, and traditionally presented in the incisive Cambridge fashion; imperative for the instruction of such a difficult language. Unlike many others, it does not create gaps in the learner's knowledge as it progresses from chapter to chapter by omitting necessary, especially basic aspects of the Arabic grammar. For example, grammatical case endings of words (nominative, accusative, genitive) are presented promptly and are not left as a mystery for half of the book: in other texts they unexpectedly arise, confuse and discourage the learner thoroughly, especially in combination with other complex grammatical structures such as those related to possession. Every necessary part of the grammar is introduced in the most logical manner possible, and examples and drills are presented from the start in every chapter, thus exercising the Arabic grammatical muscle of the learner which takes ever so long and much care to develop. Truely, the tone and language of the author may be considered obsolete, but his knowledge and presentation of Arabic grammar is absolutely not, and both have the precision of a razor. This is a necessary pedagogical characteristic especially at the beginning level. And so this book is almost certainly the gold standard to learners and adepts of Arabic alike for the purpose of learning and perfecting the elusive grammar of the Arabic language.

Lessons are very clear and concise. Plenty of examples & exercises. I have been looking for an arabic learning course book for quite some time, and non thus far excel Mr Cowan's book in clearity & exciting... Learning through the lessons, I feel more and more at ease with the Arabic language and flame my interest to learn more. No stress in learning...

But the book need to be revised as it was published in 1958... sooo long ago.

In my opinion, it is the BEST book on introduction to learning the arabic language that I have come acrossed...

Highly recommended...

I might hesitate to recommend this book to someone completely new to MSA, but if you've had previous exposure to the language and want to review the essentials of Arabic grammar, you simply won't find a better book. It can also serve as a basic reference work, although there's no index.

The autodidact who knows no Arabic might be better served with a book that presents the material at a more leisurely pace; a basic knowledge of grammatical terminology would also be useful. A very motivated self-teacher could emerge from these pages with an admirably solid grounding in the fundamentals of Arabic grammar, though.

This is an excellent book, and I recommend it.

Comprehensive. First grammar I studied, suitable for the beginning Arabic scholar. The style is limpid and sobre but it is one of the best introductions to the language. For the first time language learner, I recommend a preliminary recourse into English Grammar. Those already familiar with grammar terms in English or corresponding European grammars should endeavour into explicatory texts (Tritton, Learn Arabic For English Speakers)to thoroughly grasp the Arabic concept of Aspect and its usage. For the speaker whose native language is not a highly inflected one (i.e. ablative language, etc.)particular attention should be paid to Case, or even Mood to fully understand the material presented. For most European users, familiar concepts may prove distracting rather than helpful. It is important, after completing the course to be able to think outside of the metalanguage frame, since we know that all grammars are unique. When in possesion of the book, do not be overwhelmed with the beginning language learner's first impression, that of tedious, prolix data which would be impossible to attain. The presentation should in fact redound to one's advantage in future as the features of the book can be made suitable as a reference grammar for both Classical and Modern varieties in place of the more expensive and non-extant grammatical corpuses.

I recently obtained my copy of this book....
I can't say I've read the whole book. Also, I'm no
expert in Arabic; I'm just a guy with a general curiosity
about langages in general and a curiosity about Arabic
in particular at the moment. I'll also reveal my
limitations by mentioning I'm a native speaker of
American English, and not truly fluent in any other
language.

It's clear to anyone trying to learn this language that
a key aspect to learning the language is to learn the
script. The arabic writing system is much more complicated
than the roman alphabet used in most European languages,
so it seems obvious that it is absolutely essential
to make an understanding of this completely clear
at the outset.

However I find this book to be printed with the writing
which is not quite distinct, so one can't clearly make out
what it is one is seeing. The writing system has lots of
little dots and lines and other marks above or below the
"main" part of the letters, but the printing of these
letters is sufficiently small and blurry that the
reader simply can't tell in many cases if that little
blotch is a pair of dots, or a short line, or if it
has more complicated structure to it. It's simply impossible
to tell.

One might think that the book as a whole is simply poorly
printed. This is not entirely the case; the english text
is printed in a very crisp, clear font which is easy to
make out, showing fine detail very well. The problem
is that the arabic writing is simply not printed as
clearly.

I think the arabic letters are distinct enough that
one can tell them apart, and I'm pretty sure that
a person who already knows the writing system
would have no problem using this book to learn the
language.

However for a person like me who does not know the
arabic script, this book is maddening and is not
a useful place to start. There seem to be books... that purport to teach

the arabic script itself. I haven't seen them and
I don't know how good they are, but something like
those books seems to be an essential prerequisite
to making much use of this book.

After basing my purchose of this book on the
other 5-star reviews, I am extremely disappointed
with what I find.

Even overlooking the problem with the script, I find
the exposition of the grammar to be merely fair
and not great. I've read grammars for classical
Latin, classical and Homeric Greek, modern German,
French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Hebrew, Russian,
Ukranian, and Japanese, and by comparison this book
is simply not as clear in its exposition. If this is, as
claimed, the best available, then this is more
of a statement about the sad state of the teaching
of Arabic to English speakers than it is a statement
about the excellence of this text.
That said, I won't say this is a completely awful
book. It is readable, once you get past the problem
with the script. But I recommend that beginners
find some other book to learn the script from; and
try to make a careful comparison with other books
for the learning of the grammar.