Customer Reviews

Your First 100 Words in Arabic : Beginner's Quick & Easy Guide to Demystifying Non-Roman Scripts

5 star:		(11)
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3 star:		(3)
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"Read and Speak Arabic for Beginners" for the maximum benefit. I've been teaching myself Arabic off and on since I lived in Egypt in 1994, and these two are the best books for basic learning that I've found. Good basis on the fundamentals of the written language, as well as basic conversational skills. Repetition, the key to learning anything new, is the primary means in these books. However, as you progress, they reinforce the words and language skills learned earlier by forcing you to incorporate them as you get farther along.

I've also found that the Hippocrene series has several excellent Arabic resources too. "Mastering Arabic" by Wightwick and Gaafar, and the companion Arabic-English dictionary and phrasebook are particularly good.

I've yet to find the "perfect" book that combines reading/writing, vocabulary, and grammar all in one useful setting, and Amazon should know...I've bought at least a dozen different books from them in my quest...These 2 give a pretty darn good effort though.

Original review (prior to formal Arabic instruction): This book was my "ice-breaker" to learning Arabic, for personal interest in Christian-Muslim dialogue, and professional interest in Islamic world view(s). The key to this book's exceptional utility is the ease of associating sound patterns of phonetic transliteration of words for everyday objects (household items, clothing articles, etc.) with the written patterns of Arabic characters. Although I totally lacked familiarity with the Arabic alphabet, the correspondence between "sound and sight" was remarkably easy to decipher, granted the basic level of vocabulary. While I don't expect more advanced vocabulary or grammar to be nearly so easy, the book accomplishes its objective: Removing the intimidation of a completely unfamiliar alphabet. Well done!

As an aside, I've found that the ability to read music (a skill I've only recently acquired) helps significantly. It's a very short "leap" from reading pitches represented by non-Roman characters (musical notes) to reading phonemes represented by a non-Roman alphabet.

Addendum following instruction: Since writing the above review, I've completed a semester in beginning Arabic, and I now have a mild-to-moderate criticism of the book. There are basic sounds and sound patterns that simply cannot be represented by English phoneticisms, period. So for the purpose of learning the *sounds* represented by Arabic *script*, English phoneticisms are misleading in some cases, and flat out wrong in others.

For those already familiar with Arabic sounds, phoneticisms or transliterations are merely "codes" rather than representations. Unfortunately, this book gives the (often false) impression of *representing* the sounds. Readers who get a false sense of confidence in mispronunciations learned from this book (as I did) may be discouraged when they first encounter the difficulties of correct pronunciation. That's where my music reading analogy falls apart: In music training you actually hear the notes represented by the symbols, whereas the edition of this book that I reviewed did not include a CD.

The book still works very well re demystifing Arabic *script*, but the apparent representations of Arabic *sounds* should be taken with a grain of salt. For the English speaker, many Arabic sounds and ways of verbally connecting sounds are totally unfamiliar. To learn to properly pronounce Arabic on even the most basic level, inter-personal instruction is an absolute must. Recordings are good supplements for "ear training," but they cannot provide the correction essential for properly *verbalizing* Arabic sounds.

As an example of why this correction is essential, well into my first semester of very exacting instruction, I could detect the anglicized mispronunciations of acquaintances who've "picked up" Arabic overseas without benefit of intensive instruction. In contrast, on the first day of my second semester, my new teacher, a native *Saudi* Arab speaker, took me aside and remarked on the correctness of my pronunciation. Interestingly, my first teacher was a native *Sudanese* Arab speaker, indicating that modern standard Arabic really is just that - a standardized way of speaking as well as writing across nationalities.

The title is only half true. Yes, this will give you your first 100 words in Arabic, with neat flashcards and some good exercises. For the price it is reasonable, although 100 words is really not much (even if you've never studied French or Spanish, for example, you probably know well over 100 words in each).
On the other side, this book will not teach you the Arabic script. That is OK, since it provides both Arabic and transliterated Arabic on the flashcards. It gives you a chart of Arabic letters and a page with general principles of joining letters. You cannot reasonably go from that to unraveling the Arabic writing. That part of the title should be cut out. You need a book like Awde's "The Arabic Alphabet" a cheap and useful guide for learning the alphabet.

This book does exactly what the title says: it makes learning the script an easier process. I used this book first and then went on to Arabic Explorer software by Rosetta Stone. I found I was pronouncing words wrong, but that was easily corrected because I only knew 100 words. I don't know how I could have used the Arabic Explorer software without this book, because they don't even introduce the script. With this book though it was a good transition. The best way I found to use this book was to go through a set of flashcards until I had the transliteration memorized and then start trying to cover up the transliteration and go straight from the Arabic script to the English word. A very good starting place for those who want to read and speak Arabic.

Spent all of June in Safaga, Egypt. I showed this book to my Egyptian counterpart (a teacher, private pilot, Senior Master Gulf of Suez Ship Pilot, and business owner) and he immediately asked me to buy one for him to use to help his clients when they're in town. This is the way most of us learned English in Grammar school. Some by rote and visual learning. I believe this is the best primer for English-speakers available on the market. Definately the most useful of the ...of books/tapes I have purchased. I'm going to AMAZE my host family when I return to Ismalia next month.

This book was full of games that children play to help learn words. Although I found it hard at first to resist the temptation to just memorize the alphabet, I followed the authors' recommendation to learn the alphabet simply by becoming familiar with the words. However, I was disappointed to find several errors on the flashcards. This is a good way to ease yourself into learning Arabic, but for those on a limited budget I would advise looking into buying another book.

This is the book to begin learning any language. This makes the transition to other learning methods much easier. This book gives the foundation for reading Arabic script and recognizing essential words in the Arabic language. I did have the pronunciation of some words wrong, but it was easy to make corrections. Other methods will teach the grammar and phrases, but this book should be the first to buy. This book and the "Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic" have given me a basis for expanding my knowledge of the Arabic language.

This book is fabulous. I own several books for Arabic self study, but this is the one that really got me off and running. By the end of the book, the reader will have gotten a firm grasp of the alphabet and have practiced writing it while learning some basic vocabulary. Very good for language learners with different learning styles, thanks to the visual input including pictures. I highly recommend this for the beginner. The introduction has a useful chart and explanations. A great value as well.

"Your first 100 words in Arabic" isbn 0-8442-2395-6 It has great cut out flash cards for studying. I am like a kid, I like pictures. The alphabet is presented in a way where you can learn the different writing positions of each letter and the pronuciation. I go to this book all the time for reference purposes.

check out my review for "Masting Arabic" another great book

This book offers a great place to start learning arabic vocabulary. After learning the alphabet and some basic grammar from other books I was happy to have this book to learn some basic vocabulary from. Though some people may think of the games as "kid stuff" I found them a great way to reinforce my memory.