A Basic Course in Moroccan Arabic With Mp3 Files (Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics)

(Author), Mohammed Abu-Talib (Author), William S. Carroll (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"A Basic Course in Moroccan Arabic" was first introduced to Arabic language students in the 1960s. This volume also includes an audio CD of MP3 files that further aid the lessons presented.

Product Details

• Paperback: 395 pages
• Publisher: Georgetown University Press (February 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589010817
• ISBN-13: 978-1589010819
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #363,871 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a limited book with really lousy audio, March 1, 2009

By	perekladach (Carbondale, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews

The Georgetown series on spoken Arabic varies widely in quality. The Iraqi Arabic course is excellent and so is the Syrian Arabic course, which is available online. By comparison, this book does not deliver much. When they say "Basic", they're not kidding: The vocabulary is very
limited, although useful and with drilling (1960's style repetition) one certainly gets it down. The Lonely Planet Moroccan Arabic book is a good place to go to build on the seven hundred or so words this book offers, and there is also a Moroccan grammar in this same series that gives more grammatical details than the bare essentials offered in this volume. So for an introductory course this isn't a bad place to start.

So why only two stars? Because the audio is very poor, and in this day and age it is hard to see much excuse for that. What is actually on these MP3s is the tapes from nineteen sixty whatever, and seemingly without any attempt to enhance them (or eliminating extraneous sounds),
much less having the book re-recorded by a contemporary native speaker. When I ordered the audio from Georgetown (having already obtained the book) I actually spoke with a woman who told me that her husband was Moroccan. In other words, Georgetown wouldn't have had to look very far if they decided that a badly-needed do-over of their audio was in order.
This is 2009, guys. Get your act together.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good course for spoken Moroccan Arabic, January 6, 2008

By	Michael A. Dean (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are out to develop spoken proficiency in the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, I don't think there is any better product out there. I have been working with this book for about 2 months, and feel like I am already gaining a good grasp of the basics of the language. The exercises are generally easy to follow and facilitate learning.

The downside is that the sound quality of the recordings is quite poor (though understandable), and there are some inconsistencies between the recordings and the written exercises that support them.

Also, keep in mind that the book is entirely in transliteration, and as such does not help with learning to read Arabic at all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Drills drills and more drills, February 6, 2009

By	Iluvfreeshipping (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

The sound quality for the mp3s are not great, actually they are downright crappy - sounds like they were recorded in the author's kitchen. But the drills are helpful if you have the patience and attention span for repetition. Its pretty much an old school way of learning the language, repeating every word you hear about 5 times and moving on to the next word. Considering there are hardly any other moroccan arabic books out there, think it is a good book to get the language into your system. If you can get through the 700+ words repeated 5 times each at the beginning of the book, then you can move on to the exercises. Looks like it builds on previous knowledge. Also, there is no arabic script in the text so if you started learning the sounds that way, you'll have to get used to having everything transiterated in this book's style. A bit daunting but manageable in short sessions as all the drills are clearly marked in the book and categorized in the mp3 library.