Colloquial Arabic of Egypt (Colloquial Series) 2nd Edition

by Jane Wightwick (Author), Mahmound Gaafar (Author)

13 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0415276917

ISBN-10: 0415276918

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The second edition of this course in Arabic of Egypt for beginners has been completely revised and updated to make learning Arabic of Egypt easier and more enjoyable than ever before.
Specially written by experienced teachers for self-study and class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Arabic of Egypt. No prior knowledge of the language is required.
What makes Colloquial Arabic of Egypt your best choice in personal language learning?
* The Arabic presented in this course is given in romanised form throughout
* The Arabic script is introduced progressively to aid familiarity with the standard written language
* Emphasis on modern conversational language with clear pronunciation guidance
* Grammar section for easy reference
* Stimulating exercises with lively illustrations
By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Arabic of Egypt in a broad range of everyday situations.

About the Author

Jane Wightwick was formerly EFL editor then Publisher at Macmillan Education, where she workedon two self-study series: Breakthrough Languages and Macmillan Masters.
Mahmoud Gaafar is a native speaker of Egyptian Arabic. In 1986 he moved to the UK and founded g-and-w advertising, specializing in press and print for the Arab world.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 2nd edition (December 29, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0415276918
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415276917
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 2 x 9.5 inches

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Jane Wightwick

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Jane Wightwick is an experienced language instructor, author, and respected developer of language learning materials.

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Sarah

The colloquial series in general is FANTASTIC. However

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 16, 2015

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The colloquial series in general is FANTASTIC. However, the arabic series (for all dialects) are too short, miss the mark on the standard of excellence I expect from the series, and needs a huge overall. It will work fine for you if you want to get enough language to travel but not for the even semi-serious language learner.

2 people found this helpful

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Leonardo Vieira

Needs just some few improvements

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 21, 2004

Very good approach to spoken arabic language in Egypt!
I see some things that could be improved to make it perfect:
1. doesn't teach arabic writting, only charts of characters and the complete texts written in arabic in the last pages...
2. just few vocabulary... it's a book to teach SPOKEN arabic! It needs more vocabulary!!
I solved it with Lonely Planet Egyptian Arabic Phrasebook.
But if you make it thru the entire book, you surely understand egyptian arabic spoken in arabic tv channels and people from Egypt and make yourself understood!
I highly recomend it!

21 people found this helpful

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perekladach

skimpy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 5, 2009

This is a pretty limited course in a lot of different respects. It doesn't treat grammar as thoroughly as it should and the amount of vocabulary it offers won't get a learner past the very beginning level. There is a little bit of material on the Arabic alphabet, but the very short dialogues are all written in a confusing system of transliteration, even though probably the majority of English-speaking students of spoken Arabic have already studied Standard Arabic for a while and of course know the alphabet. So there isn't really a whole lot here, although if you buy the accompanying CDs they will give you a good idea of how to pronounce words. Check out the American University in Cairo Press for some much more comprehensive courses (although be forewarned that the 'Kallimni 'Arabi' series by Samia Louis is almost entirely written in Arabic and would be very hard to do without a teacher.

7 people found this helpful

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Gwilym

One of the worst colloquial courses

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 30, 2008

While the Colloquial course enjoy a good reputation for its courses in European languages, its three Arabic courses have been a disgrace for some twenty years already - something even those responsible at Routledge (the publisher) have admitted in private.

The main problem with this course is exactly the same as in the older Colloquial Arabic courses, far too little content. Compared to most other courses, this book is very thin despite Arabic being notoriously difficult. This leads to two consequences:

a. the grammar descriptions are too short and more bewildering than helpful. Colloquial courses for almost all European languages include a complete overview of the main grammatical points (of course not always in great detail, but still). For a beginner coming to Arabic, this course is likely to scare him/her off, as it doesn't help one bit in understanding grammar but still includes just enough to make it seem hard.

b. the vocabulary is a joke. For most other Colloquial courses, the vocabulary you learn in the course is somewhere around 1400-1600 words. Many courses include over 2000 words (Colloquial Italian, Icelandic, Albanian, Czech, Russian, Spanish of Latin America and probably others as well). This course, in sharp contrast, doesn't even include 600 words, and that's far too little for a course calling itself a "complete" language course.

So only one third of the vocabulary found in other Colloquial courses and hardly any help at all with the grammar. Despite having three Arabic courses on the market, Routledge still hasn't tried to produce a course that would fulfill the promises given by its other courses and by the "complete course"-label.

11 people found this helpful

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Agueda G. Morsy

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 3, 2006

As a linguist I would recommend this book to anybody who is seriously interested in studying Egyptian Arabic. The book has an excellent structure to make it as easy as possible to understand and learn Arabic. It is a perfect introduction to the language and culture, enabling the student to actually communicate and write in the language.

Agueda Morsy

8 people found this helpful

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Book Lover

This cassette was a total waste of money.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 25, 2005

I found the title to be a totally misleading. I thought that this was a "beginners Arabic course" which came with both a book AND a cassette. However all that was delivered was a cassette. I looked and looked in the box for the book and then got back on the Amazon website to see if they forgot to send me the book. To my amazement I discovered that I had paid $25.00 for a cassette! Arabic is not your everyday language, we all know a little bit of French and Spanish, but Arabic is totally foreign to me. I would never have paid $25 for a cassette without a little phrasebook. I thought I would give the tape a chance, perhaps I would enjoy it and could memorize the basic words and phrases by writing them down phonetically. Well, once I listened to the tape, I was even more disappointed. The tape spent about 1 minute giving the sounds of the arabic alphabet and about 1 minute teaching how to say "Hello" and "Good morning". There were no other basic phrases, such as "Thank you", "Please",etc. which for me were especially important. While in Egypt for two weeks I would like to know some basics, however this tape goes into people speaking arabic and one is supposed to figure out what they are saying 3 minutes after you begin the tape AND respond in arabic!They even continually refer to a booklet. But that booklet obviously did not come with the tape and would have to purchased separately, adding additional cost to something that should have been included if it truly wanted to be considered "a complete course".I would have returned the tape and exchanged it for something else, but I had misplaced the packing materials. Every time I see the tape in the car I thing of what a waste it was. In summary, the title "Colloquial Arabic of Egypt:The Complete Course for Beginners" and the price leads one to believe that you are getting a complete course. I have purchased similar courses for Russian, French and Italian in the past. They all included a small phrasebook along with a cassette. They generally cost about $15-$20. I am very disappointed with this "course" and would not recommend it to anyone.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Great intro for the complete beginner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 20, 2013

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I have written a separate review for the CD set, which says it all. The book would be fine as a stand-alone, but the CDs certainly help (despite the issue I raise in the other review). The course is logical, easy to use and generally hard to fault, though I think it's worth learning the Arabic script before you start and using this from the word go. You'll also need a dictionary as the word list in this book is very limited. The Rough Guide Egyptian phrasebook is probably the most handy to use and covers most of the words you're likely to need (and meet in the book), and there are online translation sites for others.

Wozniak

Good book if you learn already egyptian arabic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 21, 2013

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you learn more about talking situations with this book. i do miss writing at the beginning already. but generally good!

Zohara

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 30, 2015

Verified Purchase

Fantastic book

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Colloquial Arabic of Egypt (Colloquial Series) 2nd Edition

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