Customer Reviews

A Student Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic

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I've been using this book as a quick grammar reference for university level Arabic classes for several years now (picked it up soon after it came out) and don't have much to complain about. Schulz's book is concise, compact, thorough, and relatively inexpensive. The layout isn't completely intuitive and may be confusing if you aren't used to Arabic grammar references. The index is laid out nicely and is easily accessible. I have no problem using this book in class to quickly find and clarify an aspect of grammar without falling behind the rest of the students. Its the perfect complement to Arabic instructional materials like the Al-Kitaab series, which do a good job of introducing grammatical rules and structures but aren't easy to reference and lack concise explanations.

A few things are worth mentioning however...

* You need to be able to read Arabic script to effectively use the book as the examples are not transliterated.

* You should have at least a basic knowledge of Arabic before using this book, or you won't get much out of it. Its probably best if you have studied Arabic for at least a year, as you will not need this book much for the first year of study. For intermediate level students and higher this book is great for review, but if you have not been introduced to a concept previously it is difficult to learn it through this book. Combining this reference with Al-Kitaab and a competent instructor works well, and as you become more proficient in the language this book becomes increasingly useful.

* Again, to clarify; this book is not supposed to teach you Arabic grammar, it is a reference tool. To quote the preface, "Not all the rules are explained in detail since the room assumes that the user already knows Arabic and should be able to deduce the rule in question from the examples quoted." This doesn't mean the book is useless for non-advanced students, just that you need to supplement it with instructional materials (and an instructor!). I personally found the book disappointing until my knowledge of Arabic grammar grew and I could make sense of the examples and terminology.

* Depending on your knowledge of Arabic and linguistics (and Arabic linguistics in particular) you may need to study the basic lexicon before being able to effectively use this book. The grammatical concepts and terms are referred to and indexed in both English and Arabic. If you are still working on basic grammar you probably are only comfortable in one or the other, so you should use either the English or Arabic terms and not both to avoid confusion. I've found that this book is helping me to understand Arabic grammar in both languages as I try to learn the English terminology when reviewing topics, and I can now compare the grammars of both English and Arabic easier.

For example, I now know that al-marfoo3, al-manSub, al-majzum and al-amr are moods, and that Arabic contains two voices. Before I didn't associate imperative with anything else and only thought of the aforementioned concepts in relation to their case ending rather than their grammatical function. If you had asked me what accusative or jussive meant before I got this book I wouldn't have had a clue.



The reviewer Colin is right that this book isn't for the beginning student, but it isn't just for advanced students either. I think he was looking for an instructional text, which may explain much of his review. Still, in response to some of his points... Masdar is a very basic concept and isn't too difficult compared to many of the other grammatical structures so it doesn't need many pages for elaboration. The verb charts are organized correctly, on page 12 Schulz clarifies with, "The order of persons in the Arabic conjugational paradigm is 3rd person - 2nd person - 1st person. This complies with Arab tradition and the practice pursued in nearly all Arabic textbooks." The dual forms are necessary to learn for literary Arabic, though for beginning students they can be ignored. The "'added' extra marks" are diacritics denoting the short vowels and are absolutely essential for literary (esp. classical) Arabic as they mark case and help identify the form used. If you have not used vocalized script before you certainly haven't progressed far enough to need this book!

The reviewer Just Another Linguist also has some misconceptions about the text. The book is organized into three parts: verbs, nouns, and syntax. Within each section the concepts are organized into further sub-divisions. It all flows nicely and the organization works well for a reference grammar, though if you wanted to learn Arabic grammar the organization is not suited to working through the whole book which may be the reason for such comments. I haven't noticed anything in the way of typographical errors, and certainly nothing to diminish the quality the text. The complaint about price feels odd to me as this is probably the cheapest Arabic-study related book I own and it is well worth the price!


I wasn't going to write a review for this book until I saw the existing ones, which I don't feel appropriately represent the text. 'A Student Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic' is a great reference guide that is best used in conjunction with other instructional materials or by those with decent existing knowledge of Arabic grammar. Its compact and easily transportable, well-organized and indexed, has examples for everything, isn't very expensive, and will be useful for as long as you continue to use/study Arabic.

This is a comprehensive treatment of Arabic grammar that suffers from (1) extremely strange organization (important, common topics are discussed after much more obscure ones have been treated) and (2) a price that seems, to me, to be too high for what you get. Additionally, there are many typographical errors.

However, the reviewer who critiques this book based on what he thinks he learned in first-year Arabic is misinformed. The Arabic verb system is commonly described as "perfect" and "imperfect," rather than "past" and "present," by many Arabic grammarians; this isn't a quirk of Schulz's, much less something Schulz does just to be difficult! Additionally, the "anaa, anta, anti" order of presenting verbs is not the way verbs are traditionally presented in the Arabic world - this order was borrowed from the traditional way of teaching European languages, and although many English-language Arabic texts use it, there's nothing particularly odd about using the Arabic system instead.

Finally, the vowel marks the other reviewer thinks are "extra" or "added" are perfectly standard in formal Arabic. (They're not normally spoken aloud, and as a result many introductory Arabic classes omit them ... but they're certainly not wrong!)

Perfect quick reference guide for advanced-intermediate readers of Arabic. Print quality is great. Typos are few if any (fewer than one would expect, in any case). Don't pay any attention to others' complaints about the organization being weird. That charge is simply not true. The explantions are concise, but thorough and well-worded. The table of contents and English index are straight-forward and user-friendly. All of this combined with an (invaluable) Arabic function-word index make this book more than adequate (I would even say indispensable) for around 95% of an advanced learner's grammatical reference needs. I also recommend acquiring Karin Ryding's Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic as a back up, for the (less than) 5% of the time when you need more detail on some obscure irregular (hamzated/weak/hollow/defective, etc) verb/participial form in a certain measure (for example). Believe me, in most cases Schulz's book has everything you will need and you will quickly be able to find it. Lastly, the book is very reasonably priced. Buy it, you won't be sorry.

By the way, this is a book to refer to as you deveolp you skills reading Arabic literature. If you don't have a basic reading knowledge of Arabic, then you need to be in a class with a teacher and a beginning Arabic textbook of some kind.

The only thing more indispensable to me than this book is Hans Wehr's dictionary itself. Enough said.

The perfect grammar reference, comprehensible, clear and well-structured, when you already have a basic knowledge on Arabic. Not to be used by a beginner learner (when I bought it, I was studying Arabic for my second year).

Schulz's book is too complicated for a beginner; I would recommend it only for the advanced or intermediate student of Arabic. I don't like that it calls the past and present tenses "perfect and imperfect" (why not just call them past and present???) just to confuse you. To add insult to injury, the charts of verbs are different than those I learned in school. Instead of being arranged: ana, anta, anti, huwa, heya; nahnu, antum, antunna, hum, hunn...the pronouns in the verb charts are just arranged any old way. Plus, this book doesn't even cover in depth something very important: the Masdar! I think, though I'm not sure because I'm not an advanced scholar, that there are "added" extra marks above some of the letters, like the spelling is slightly different than what I have learned. Like a double dumma at the end of a word, or a kasra under a ta-marbuta for no apparent reason.

Ok, that said it certainly is very thorough, and probably appropriate for the advanced student who already knows what it is talking about. It is just not what a beginning or intermediate student needs as a reference grammar to have at his side to correct his homework or whatever, or look something up. I do not think it gives enough examples, nor does it clearly explain what it is demonstrating. This is clearly an advanced book; not something I would want to fool around with (I'm just ending Arabic 102).