Customer Reviews

Middle East: Lonely Planet Phrasebook

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

 

 

This book offers the phrases any visitor is most likely to need in Turkish, Farsi (Persian), Hebrew, and as many as five different "dialects" of Arabic: Modern Standard, Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, Tunisian. The variety of Arabic presented is very interesting - I am not aware of any other phrasebook to more than one Arabic dialect.
I did find the phrases were well-selected (and the most important terms in all 8 languages like "please", "thank you", "excuse me" etc. are handily grouped together on the inside of the covers) and the fact that they are accompanied by the original script is very useful, considering how hard to pronounce Arabic can be in particular.
The only reason I give this book only 4 stars is that I'd much rather see Kurdish (spoken by millions in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria) than Tunisian Arabic in it. Any way I look at it, Tunisia is nowhere near the Middle East, and even without that, 4 Arabic dialects should be enough to get you around the Middle East!

I was just in Syria and Turkey with this phrase book. There are very few useful phrases here. Very little in terms of conversation.

The arabic part is pretty useless since the pronunciation is way off and people have no idea what you're talking about when you use it.

I would suggest saving your money if you're thinking of buying it.

When I tried to use this phrasebook, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The very first entry for each of the five Arabic dialects is, "Do you speak English?" What?!? If a person who speaks no Arabic, like me, wants to converse with a native Arabic speaker, s/he should ask, "Do you speak English?" IN ENGLISH! Believe me, you will know the answer from the person's facial response. I certainly don't need to pose the question in a language that I am wholly unable to converse in, that's for sure. The very notion is absurd.

Want more laughs? This book is full of them. How about the most useful words to learn in any foreign language: thank you. You can look high and low and you won't find it in this purported phrasebook. Likewise, you will not easily find "Excuse me", "Please", "Hello", or "Goodbye", some of the other most important words you can learn. You will, however, find such useful expressions as "Can you write down the price?" (I'm sure that for one or two persons, the need for that phrase must come up all the time.)

Save your money. You don't want this book.