25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
About Colloquial Dialects, February 28, 2006
This review is from: Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic Complete Course, CD package (Paperback)
The other reviewer must be unaware that two forms of Arabic exist. Modern Standard Arabic, or MSA, is the language of the Quran and is used for reading and writing and very occasionaly by university educated speakers. Then there are Colloquial dialects. Gulf Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Levantine Arabic, Morrocan Arabic, etc. This is the SPOKEN language of the various regions, and it has very little (if anything!) to do with the written form of the language. To REALLY learn Arabic, you almost have to learn two seperate languages. One for reading and writing (MSA), another for speaking (one of the many Colloquial dialects).
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Introductory Gulf Arabic from Teach Yourself, May 31, 2007
This review is from: Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic Complete Course, CD package (Paperback)
This product is a mixed bag having both positive and negative attributes with the positives more than counterbalancing the negatives. The strong point of the book is that it is very readable and interesting so if you buy it, you are very likely to read it and study from it. The two CDs are useful also; however, the authors sanction the use of just a little too much English on the Gulf Arabic CDs. Using English, especially on the second CD, doesn't commend itself in terms of pedagogy; it cuts against immersion, which is the best way to learn a foreign language. Reliance on an Gulf Arabic transcript and translation thereof contained in the appendix could have reduced usage of English on the CDs. The buyers presumably already know English and they ought to pay to hear Gulf Arabic as much as possible.
The book is also modestly at fault for the same. After a listening or reading exercise, the questions should be expressed in Gulf Arabic rather than in English, if not from the very beginning, then early on into the text. (Translations of these questions with answers could have appeared in the appendix.) To move beyond survival language skills, more grammatical exercises, especially verb conjugations, would have been useful. (The section on the Arabic verb is too short.) It is not clear how the reader can "explore the language in depth" without such drills (although, in fairness, other language skills are adequately drilled).
The book is marred by a few other misleading claims. Content is touted with providing the reader with the ability to "learn to speak, understand and write Gulf Arabic." As another reviewer mentioned, Gulf Arabic is not ordinarily written (the only place I have seen it written is on sms messages conveying informalities like jokes). Although the text contained in the top paragraph on page 8 is generally accurate, describing the geographical extent of Gulf Arabic, the map of the Arabian Gulf on page 9 gives a misleading impression that Gulf Arabic is spoken in Riyadh, Jidda and even Sana'a. Only the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia evinces a dialect that might be labelled Gulf Arabic (although the dialect there is evolving with the varied impact of the influx of various Arab workers to this petroleum-rich area); in Riyadh, Nejdi dialect prevails and the dialect in Jidda sounds more like Egyptian Arabic.
Strangely, in paragraph four, the authors warn readers not to fall victim to what they tar "pigeon" Gulf Arabic if the reader should hear colloquial
Arabic at variance with "what is given in the book." Rather, the reader ought to be prepared to hear colloquial Arabic at variance with what is given. Even in a small state like Bahrain, there are intra-national variations between the accents, for example, of inhabitants of Muharraq and Sitra, two smaller islands. International variations mean ways to say "I want" span "abbi" and "abghi;" "ureed," which the authors recommend because, it would seem, of its simpler verb pattern, is actual Modern Standard Arabic. (In colloquial speech, in fact, I haven't heard "ureed" anywhere in the Arab World from Morocco to Bahrain.) It worries me that, at times, the authors seem to be taking the readers down the road to a pan-Gulf-Arabic koine that doesn't exist.
Some other matters from content to form: the book boasts a glossary of Gulf Arabic-English and English-Gulf Arabic reflecting the vocabulary units found in the text but the Index is too short to be of much use and the "glossary of language terms" is a waste of space.
Although the quality of the paperback is fine, the plastic packaging is terrible insofar as it is difficult to extricate the two CDs from the plastic without risking damage to one or both. After a laborious effort, I retrieved the second CD scratched which made it impossible to hear the final lesson without the soundtrack skipping. A redesign of the packaging for the next edition is warranted. Of course, this quality issue is the fault of the publisher, not the authors, who have to be commended for putting together an entertaining text introducing Gulf Arabic to anglophones.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
gulf arabic, June 15, 2006
This review is from: Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic Complete Course, CD package (Paperback)
Yes, the previous post is correct. There is barely any alphabet practice and most all words are transliterated into latin alphabet. However, the dialects of Arabic are rarely written. One would almost always use MSA in writting and reading something. The dialects have no standard way of writing them, and it is not therefore taught in schools. Most anything you read will be in MSA (newspapers, news, schoolbooks, and educated writings of various sorts). The dialects, if used in writing, will be in songs, comic books, cartoons, and some informal conversations (example: email between friends). Getting back on topic, the dialects are mostly spoken and therefore it would be of little use to waste your time trying to learn how to write them. You should rather focus on learning how to write MSA. This is probably why the authors of the "Teach Yourself Gulf Arabic" do not focus very much on the written form of the Gulf dialect. Hope this helps.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
