Customer Reviews

A Pocket Dictionary of The Spoken Arabic of Cairo, English-Arabic

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You may take it from a most diligent student of Arabic who came to spend a year in Egypt able to read everything including 7-th century poetry and the Qur'an, only to find herself unable to converse with people and understand what the ... they mean - this little dictionary has been a tremendous help to me as it will be to you. Given the shortage of textbooks and dictionaries of spoken Arabic (books by M.Salib and A.at-Tonsi, both from AUC, are to be praised and recommended, but hardly anything else), Stevens's dictionary stands out as one of the most helpful. couple it with a SUPERB Egyptian Arabic-English dictionary by M.Hinds and Badawi (worth any price, more thrilling than any detective story), and you have a fair chance of getting your 'ammiya (i.e. colloquial Arabic) right. Even if you're not planning to invest much time in it but are only going to spend a few weeks in Egypt, still it is worth having.
More to the point: it covers practically all the words you need; transcription is accurate, simple but not oversimplified, as is the case with most phrasebooks that will get you just nowhere. Last but not least: it also contains essential bits of colloquial grammar (which is rather simple, so no need to fear).
Good luck!

Great pocket book for use as a starting point. Armed with this 200 page book you can usually get your meaning across to most Egyptians... they may want to 'correct' your pronounciation, but they understood what you said. The format is simple: English word followed by Egyptian pronunciation spelled out in Roman letters. Very simple once you get the hang of the few new sounds in Arabic. I lost my copy when I got back to the states and it was the first thing I looked to replace when I returned to Cairo this year.

This handy little book is great for someone who is not focusing on the Arabic script...but wants instead, a quick pocket reference on hand. Its format is English-to Transliterated Arabic only (no Arabic Script). Verbs are given in the huwwa form for both Perfect and Imperfect tense. Lots of useful sub-entries.
Plural of Nouns and adjectives and basic rule charts included at back.
This book is based on the glossary in Spoken Arabic of Cairo textbook (by Maurice Salib) and works conveniently as a supplement to it.
As the title suggests it is more of a dictionary than a so-called guidebook. I find it more thorough than the guidebooks available, yet without the benefit of phrases. It has many more word entries (6,500 including the sub-entries).
Probably would be more useful for someone studying an Egyptian course than as a stand alone book for someone trying to learn the Egyptian language....but is great to have on hand when you need a quick check for that Egyptian word that you need.

IF you are looking for a great Egyptian course that will teach you the ins and outs of spoken Cairene Arabic with a full range of conversational topics, situations and vocabularies....this is not it....try the text mentioned above by the co-author Marice Salib...by far the best available course....all you need beside it is a native speaker to help a little with pronunciation and to practice the language with.

It's nearly impossible to find a good dictionary of actual spoken Arabic but this fits the bill. It has many of the words you want to know but hardly ever use like "screw driver" and "fumigation". You won't find those in a travel dictionary, and God only knows what archaic words the MSA dictionary will have.

I'm disappointed that the actual Arabic spelling of the actual words was not included. Also, as is somewhat common among transliterated dictionaries, Greek characters are used for the letters which do not exist in English. I am at a complete loss as to why Greek characters are somehow more understandable than the actual letter from the language that I'm learning. I'm learning Arabic, not Greek. Also the Greek letters they chose are of course different than the Greek letters chosen by other authors, which only increases my confusion. The transliteration key does not even include the Arabic characters, leaving me to guess what letter "similar to the 'ch' in German 'doch'" refers to. I also don't speak German. I would think anyone who would find this dictionary useful would also have at least an elementary grasp on what sounds Arabic letters make, and if not it seems using the Arabic letters would help force them down that path a bit better than Greek letters.

I used this dictionary on a recent trip to Egypt (Cairo/Luxor) and found it to be quite useful. The book isn't huge and doesn't have the most extensive vocab list, but for the purposes of navigating your way around, it was super useful. In the touristy areas, most everyone speaks some English, but being able to ask for things in the local version of Arabic brings smiles to people's faces and makes things go more smoothly. My colleague learned that the word "la" meant "no", and shouted it at anyone who came near, such as camel-ride vendors and the boat-ride guys in Luxor. I learned to say "Not today, maybe tomorrow" and got quite a few smiles and waves. Not exactly fluency, but hey, it worked. Better than screaming "LA" at the top of your lungs.

The book has the two verb bases used in creating past or present/future sentences, plurals of nouns, and masculine/feminine versions of adjectives. It also has a small grammar section. It's very easy to use and the explanations of words and grammar are quite clear. All in all, a great little book.

You can pick it up in Egypt for around $5 US. I got mine at the hotel gift shop in Cairo.