Customer Reviews

Kallimni Arabi (book & CD): An Intermediate Course in Spoken Egyptian Arabic

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Having taught out of this book and reviewed the others for the publisher, I can say that the books in the Kallimni Arabi series altogether present the best Arabic textbooks available (whether for spoken or written Arabic). The method followed by the books is intended to enable students to learn from example and practice rather than through lengthy explanations of structure and usage. The books are designed in a way that they almost teach themselves; they could actually be used for self-instruction. That cannot be said for any other Arabic textbook I know of.

The praiseworthy features of the book are many; of those, I'll name some of my favourites: intuitive diagrams of stress rules to help students acquire the rhythmic musicality of Egyptian speech; where variants in usage occur in the natural speech of Egyptians, the books reflect it (many Arabic textbooks gloss over such variants for the sake of simplicity); there is consistent, attractive artwork throughout (a real novelty in the Arabic textbook trade); the audio materials, presented on a CD, actually feature people with pleasant voices who know how to act (another novelty - mind you, the Al-Kitaab series, which teaches modern written Arabic, and which is the teaching standard, employs real actors); and the "from real life" segments at the end of each module are presented with realistic ambient noise (a party with people talking in the background; a taxi ride with Quranic recitation on the radio and Cairo traffic fulminating outside). These may seem like trivial considerations, but they place these books miles ahead of most other Arabic textbooks.

There are some things that I might have done differently, the most salient of which is the treatment of vocabulary. There is never a comprehensive list of vocabulary presented anywhere in the lessons, neither at the beginning nor the end (I have seen both in other textbooks), nor is the glossary in the end materials comprehensive. This is not a huge flaw, however; nor is it an oversight. The authors have done this of a purpose, intending that students acquire vocabulary in context (not a bad idea in itself). This means that someone teaching out of the book or someone using this book as a self-teaching aid would need to augment the book with a dictionary (also not a bad idea). A good beginners dictionary is also published by the AUC Press: A Pocket Dictionary of the Spoken Arabic of Cairo: English-Arabic, with somewhere above 6000 entries. In it, the Arabic is presented in transliteration, while Kallimini Arabi generally uses the Arabic script throughout - except in the vocabulary lists. In the beginners volume, which has just been published, the Arabic script is taught, and practice drills are presented in transliteration.

If you get really good or really interested in Egyptian Arabic (of if you want to become so), you should also eventually plan to buy A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic: Arabic-English, by Martin Hinds and El-Said Badawi. The best dictionary of colloquial Arabic available, users need to know how to read Arabic in order to use it, because the entries are listed in Arabic (definitions are in English and the examples of usage are in transliteration); familiarity with the citation method used in the The Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, the Bible of Arabic students, would also be useful.

Should one learn Egyptian Arabic or another variety? Considering that about a quarter of all native speakers of Arabic are from Egypt (assuming upwards of 75 million people in Egypt and some 300 million in the entire Arab world) we could say that the most widely spoken vernaculars are the Egyptian vernaculars. That of Cairo is generally the one labelled "Egyptian Arabic", but the other Egyptian varieties can lay equal claim to the appellation. Even so, speakers of the Cairene vernacular are understood throughout Egypt and to some (perhaps a large) degree throughout the Arab world; anyone who owns a television set in the Arab world will be exposed to the Cairene vernacular (they could hardly escape it).

My contention is that learners should concentrate on learning a spoken vernacular first. If they intend to go in with their engagement with the Arab world, and I hope they do, they will eventually have to learn what is usually called Modern Standard Arabic, or that form used with minor local variations in writing throughout the Arab world (but not spoken as a native tongue by anyone). By starting with a spoken vernacular like that of Cairo learners will acquire many of the somewhat initially challenging grammatical features of Arabic, which are shared by the spoken and written forms - after all, they are two aspects of the same language - in a conceptually less challenging framework, while learning how to talk about ordinary life and immediate needs and interests.

All that said, the Kallimni Arabi series is the best place to begin a study of Arabic.

If you want to learn Spoken Egyptian Arabic then this book is all you need. You have to be able to read Arabic though, it is an intermediate course so it doesn't start from teaching the alphabet or simple words.

I bought this book for my kids who are Egyptians but forgot the Arabic language (living abroad). They did not resist taking lessons from this book (as they tried with other books and weekend schools). The lessons are fun and not boring. They actually got hooked to it.

This book is for all ages, but mostly adults.

This is a good transition book from standard Arabic to Egyptian. If you're going to Egypt, you need colloquial. For a beginner, though, start with a basic text, like Kullu Tammam. (This one uses Arabic script, for example, not transliteration). The authors are from ILI in cairo, a top rate school for colloquial Egyptian. And let's face it, that's the most important Arabic dialect.

The audio is great, the CD very easy to use and well linked to the text. The scenarios are quite funny and true to life (the one with the cab driver arguing with the customer was great), so you get a little of the underside of Cairo culture thrown in.

The only drawback is that the glossary is very weak, and organized by lesson, not alphabeticallt. A lot of key colloquial terms are used but never defined.

I am a little biased, having taken courses from Samia in Cairo, but, this is a wonderful collection of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Just what we needed to stay in practice. The CD is wonderful, as I have it loaded on my IPOD, and the tracks come up randomly to keep my Arabic up. Recommend this for anyone who has studied some Egyptian Arabic, and wants to stay in practice. Not for beginners. That one is in the pipeline to be released at a future date. Enjoy!

There are many things to like in this series of textbooks focusing on spoken Egyptian Arabic. As in other works from the American University in Cairo press (the al-Kitab al'asasi series that teaches stardard Arabic, for instance)the organization of the book is very topical and each lesson focuses on particular themes. Arabic script is used from the outset, which is fine with me- the use of systems of transcription to teach the colloquial Arabic languages is a complex and confusing dead end- difficult for a native speaking teacher to use, and absolutely useless to a student once he finishes his coursework. A particular plus is the diagrams that teach Egyptian stress- while it is not too difficult to master, it differs from the stress patterns in standard Arabic and drlling on it makes the transition to spoken Egyptian much easier. The MP3s are excellent and it is possible to acquire a level of comprehension of speech at normal speed within a surprisingly short period of time.

However, this text is totally in Arabic and it is hard to imagine how an independent learner could have much success with it, or even with the introductory volume preceding it in this series (in which there actually is a little English in the beginning). A student working with this book will need a teacher not only to explain the grammar but also to find out what many of the words mean, although the book is excellently illustrated and it is certainly possible to figure out quite a bit from context. So if you have a teacher you trust, this book can take you a long way. Otherwise, try 'Kullu Tamam' (from the same pubisher, but with the grammatical coverage in English) or else 'Colloquial Arabic of Egypt' from Routledge.

Whether you have prior knowledge of MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) or just a smattering of MSA cum-colloquial Egyptian this is the book for you! You have lots of recorded dialogues and the whole book is in Egyptian Arabic! That's something I never really saw before except when I was in Cairo. To follow, you just need to learn the Arabic alphabet and that's it. The letters are not that hard to learn. They're actually beautiful and it makes sense to use them even for colloquial because you'll find most of the colloquial words in MSA so it's good to know their spelling. Colloquial is much easier than MSA and even more natural to speak. The book is user-friendly with pictures and diagrams: very easy to follow. The authors have done an outstanding job and, easily, you'll speak Egyptian in no time.